Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a
show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's
doing with his various companies, including Tesla,
SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neurolink, and of course, X.
And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share a
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It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference
for the show Elon Musk News. As crazy as it sounds that that
that is almost a literal description of the work that the
Doge team is doing is helping fix the government computer
systems. Many of these systems are
extremely old. They don't communicate.
There are a lot of mistakes in the systems.
The software doesn't work. The so we are actually Texas
hold. It's it's, it's ironic, but it's
true. The the overall goal here with
the Doge team is to help address the, the enormous deficit.
We simply cannot sustain as a country, $2 trillion deficits,
the interest rates that just the interest on the national debt
now exceeds the Defense Department spending.
We spend a lot on the Defense Department, but we're spending
like over a trillion dollars on interest.
If this continues, the country will go become de facto
bankrupt. It's not an optional thing.
It is an essential thing. That's the reason I'm here and
taking a lot of Flack and getting a lot of death threats,
By the way, I like stack them up.
But if we don't do this, America will go bankrupt.
That's why it has to be done. I'm confident at this point.
Knock on wood. You know, look on my wooden
head, the it's got a lot of work there that we can actually find
a trillion dollars in savings. That would be a roughly 15% of
the $7 trillion budget. And obviously that can only be
done with the support of everyone in this room.
And I'd like to thank everyone for your support.
Thank you very much. This can only be done with your
support. So this is really there is a
support function for the president and for the the
agencies and departments to help achieve those savings and to
effectively find 15% in reduction in fraud and waste.
And we bring the receipts. So people say like, well, is
this real? Just go to doge.gov.
We line item by line and we specify each item.
So and we, and I should say we also, we will make mistakes.
We won't be perfect, but when we make mistake, we'll fix it very
quickly. So for example, with USAID, one
of the things we absolutely cancelled very briefly was
Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all wanted Ebola
prevention. So we restored the Ebola
prevention immediately and there was no interruption.
But we, we do need to move quickly if we're if we're to
achieve a a trillion dollar deficit reduction in in
financial year 2026, it requires saving $4 billion per day every
day from now through the end of September.
But we can do it and we will do it.
Thank you. Would you have any questions of
Elon while we're on the subject of those because we'll finish
off with that. And if you would have any
questions, please ask. You could ask me or Eli.
Go ahead, please. Thank you.
Mr. President, thank you. Mr. Musk, just wanted to ask you
that the President Trump put out a true social today saying that
everybody in the Cabinet was was happy with you.
I just wondered if that's if you had heard otherwise and if you
had heard anything about members of the Cabinet who weren't happy
with the way things were going, and if So, what are you doing to
address those dissatisfaction? And let the Cabinet speak, just
for a second. Yeah, exactly.
Is anybody unhappy with a? If you are, will throw them out
of here. Is anybody?
Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing
this, and some disagree a little bit.
But I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's
not only happy, they're thrilled.
So go ahead, Elon. Grateful.
And President Trump has put together, I think, the best
cabinet ever, literally. So I and I do not give false
praise. This, this is an incredible
group of people. I don't think such a talented
team has actually ever been assembled.
I think it's literally the best cabinet that the country has
ever had and I think the company should be incredibly
appreciative of the people in this room.
Thanks. Go.
Ahead, please, yeah. Mr. President, thanking Mr.
Musk, are there about half of the government employees so far
appear to have responded to your request for what they've been
doing over the past week. Is there a timeline in place for
next moves for people being fired?
And when can the American people expect to see results from them?
Yes. Well, to be, to be clear, like
the, I think that e-mail perhaps was first interpreted as a
performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review.
Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two
neurons? So if you have a pass and two
neurons, you can reply to an e-mail.
This is, you know, I think not a high bar is what I'm saying.
This is, should be anyone could accomplish this.
But what we are trying to get to the bottom of is we think there
are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead,
which is probably why they can't respond.
And, and some people who are not real people, like they're
literally fictional individuals that are collecting paycheck.
Well, somebody's collecting paychecks on a fictional
individual. So we're literally trying to
figure out, are these people real?
Are they alive and can they write an e-mail, which I think
is a reasonable expectation for the American.
You know, the American public would have at least that
expectation of someone in the public sector.
Mr. Master mask roughly this. Is not, it's not on my bar,
guys. Go on.
Employees have responded so far to this e-mail.
Does that mean that the remaining 1 million or so
federal employees now risk being terminated?
And is it your understanding and expectation when you post a
directive on X that the Cabinet secretaries will follow that
order? Because several agencies have
instructed employees that this is voluntary or not to respond.
Yeah, Well, I mean, so I guess there was a like last week, the
President encouraged me via through social and also via
phone call to be more aggressive.
And I was like, OK, you know. Yes, Sir.
Mr. President, we will indeed do that with the President as
commander in chief. I do what the president asks.
So, and I said, can we send out an e-mail to everyone just
saying, what did you get done last week?
The president said yes. So it did that.
And you know, we got a partial response.
We're going to send another e-mail.
But our goal is not to be capricious or unfair.
It's we want to give people every opportunity to send an
e-mail. And the e-mail could simply be
what I'm working on is 2 sensitive classifieds to
describe. Like literally just that would
be sufficient. You know, I think this is just
common sense. And what is your target number
for for how many workers employees you're looking to
catch? We, we wish to keep everyone who
is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well.
But if if they're if the job is not essential or they're not
doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the
public payroll. Hey, thank you so much for
listening today. I really do appreciate your
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And I'll see you tomorrow.