Elon Musk & DOGE Team Members Go Public

If you’re an American citizen who believes in America and her future, who in their right mind can argue with this? Elon Musk and seven DOGE team members appeared Thursday on Bret Baier’s “Special Report” to highlight some of their findings in a two-part interview. These are true American heroes not just because of the work they are getting done but also because their obvious love of country displays the true character and essence of our great American heroes.

These individuals (their families, friends, and associates, too) will endure death threats and be endlessly exposed, hounded, and torn down by the Left for their patriotic fervor and successful efforts — that same despicable behavior currently aimed mostly at Elon Musk and President Trump by those who want our country to fail. Yet the volunteers calmly and competently discussed why they’re doing DOGE and what they’ve accomplished so far, standing proudly for what they know is right. These exceptionally skilled individuals emphasized “being caring, being compassionate and treating everyone with dignity and respect” as DOGE follows Trump’s instruction to use a “scalpel, not a hatchet” to continue consolidating duplicative systems, cut out fraud, and update computer systems.

These Department of Government Efficiency team members have chosen to talk publicly about their work and some were up-front about why they left the corporate world to apply business best practices to our severely damaged and broken federal systems; they emphasized the President’s emphasis on recommending “caring and compassionate” cuts.

DOGE workers — special government employees — are now roughly halfway through their assignments (by law, they can serve for only 130 days each 265-day period), so the entire interview is certainly worth watching. The second part airs on Friday’s “Special Report” on Fox News.

Steve Davis

— A “former rocket scientist” who has worked for Musk for many years and now Chief Operating Officer (day-to-day operations) of DOGE. Says the “goal is incredibly inspiring… most taxpayers would agree that .. the country going not bankrupt is a good thing; all of us are willing to put our lives on hold in order to do, I think, the right thing.”

So Far: We’ve “found 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees; that doesn’t make sense.”

Joe Gebbia

— Co-founded Airbnb (although not involved in operations since 2022, still on the board of directors) and has a net worth of about $8 billion. He’s in charge of the Digital Retirement project and said he “bumped into Anthony and Elon,” who talked to him about the mine where our government stores retirement paperwork for federal employees. “It’s an injustice to civil servants” that retirement timing depends on the physical limitations of this mine, he said.

So Far: Gebbia predicted, “Probably in the next couple of months we’ll have this (system) overhauled” and digitized.

Aram Moghaddassi

— Software engineer who worked at X, xAI, and Neuralink, now focused on the Social Security system. He says the government’s IT systems are 50 years old and cost $100 billion. Social Security can do a better job, he says, “helping people that legitimately get benefits [to] protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also just make the experience better.”

So Far: There are “15 to 20 million fraudulent social security numbers floating around that can be used only for bad intentions — there’d be no way to use those for good intentions!” Aram points out that 40% of phone calls to IRS are fraudsters changing bank accounts without original recipients’ knowledge. (On March 18 the Social Security Administration announced it will require in-person visits for benefit claims and changes to direct deposit accounts but reversed the decision “for some applicants” on March 26.)

Brad Smith

— from President Trump’s first administration, Smith is a healthcare entrepreneur working in the Department of Health & Human Services/Medicare/Medicaid area. He detailed a proposed beneficial change on grant money so that researchers would receive 85% for direct costs vs. 60% they get now (the sponsoring university gets the remainder for indirect costs related to each grant).

So Far: Smith discussed the 27 different centers, 700 different IT systems, 27 different chief information officers (most are nontechnical), and 40 different communications offices within the HHS and how computer systems “don’t talk to each other.” Smith again repeated that “we will 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid” as HHS “continues to have the best biomedical research in the world.”

Anthony Armstrong

— a former Morgan Stanley banker, now examining the Office of Personnel Management for DOGE. He says there’s “a lot of money sloshing around … if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce works, it’s really a one-way ratchet over decades. So it’s only going up, it’s only going up. You never take it away so that leaves you with duplicative functions, it leaves you with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places.”

So Far: Armstrong reports that the “IRS has 1400 people who provision laptops and cell phones” for IRS employees, adding that “if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day you could provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month.”

Pushing back on negative media about federal layoffs, Armstrong notes that “less than 0.15 — not 1.5 — less than 0.15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a riff notice,” so most who’ve left have done so voluntarily:

This is not about the employees. There’s many, many, hardworking, well-meaning people who took these jobs. … It’s just that they’re duplicating the effort of 40 offices. Once those decisions are made, there’s a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect.

Tom Krause

— CEO of Cloud Software Group; former President of Broadcom Software, now is Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the highest career position at the Treasury, examining the government’s financial infrastructure for DOGE. The Treasury’s payments system serves 580 federal agencies and disburses around $6 trillion in federal funds to Americans, such as Social Security checks and federal tax refunds.

So Far: Krause says, “as an ex-CFO of a big public tech company really what we’re doing is we’re applying public company standards to the federal government. It is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today — there is actually really only one bank account….

We can’t pass an audit! The consolidated financial report is produced by Treasury and we cannot pass and we have material weaknesses. What that means is that if I was a public company CFO, I would effectively be removed. I couldn’t file financial statements, I couldn’t issue securities which, of course, we depend on.”

No Financial Controls

Elon elaborated:

In order to pass an or audit you need the information necessary to pass an audit. You need to have the payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation, and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment was made. None of those things were mandatory until until just … last week. … We’re talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for any company to function…. If a commercial company operated the way the federal government does then it would go immediately go bankrupt, it would be delisted, the officers would be arrested. The changes we’re putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit, it will enable enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.

Tyler Hassen

— former oil company CEO who was “running 5 companies in Houston” is examining the Interior Department and reviewing contracts before they are approved for funds.

So Far: He says “under the Biden administration there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever — none. We are now reviewing every single contract, every single grant.” One of his first reveals? A grant for a 10-question survey on how much folks like a national park that cost $850 million.

Lawfare?

Baier also asked Musk about the lawfare being aimed at DOGE:

Elizabeth Sotallaro

God’s child, Arkansas conservatarian
#TheMoreYouKnow