00:00It takes a lot to get there that actually are not paid,
00:02which currently they are paid.
00:05And then there are a whole bunch of social security payments
00:07where there's no identified website.
00:09So all of our actions are maximally transparent.
00:12In fact, I don't think that's a very good point.
00:14We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few
00:17people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly
00:21a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars,
00:23but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions
00:25of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,
00:29which is what happened to USAID.
00:32We're just curious as to where it came from.
00:33But there seems to be mysteriously, they get wealthy.
00:37Why?
00:38Where does it come from?
00:39I think the reality is that they're getting wealthier
00:41at the taxpayer expense.
00:42That's the honest truth of it.
00:44If you look at, say, treasury, for example,
00:47basic controls that should be in place,
00:50that are in place in any company,
00:52such as making sure that any given payment
00:54has a payment categorization code,
00:56that there is a comment field that describes the payment,
00:59and that if a payment is on the do not pay list,
01:03that you don't actually pay it.
01:05None of those things are true currently.
01:06We're really just talking about adding common sense
01:09controls that should be present that haven't been present.
01:14Everything is geared towards complaint minimization.
01:18So then you understand the motivations.
01:21So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously.
01:25But if people don't receive money, they do complain.
01:28And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.
01:32So then when you understand that, then it makes sense.
01:36Oh, that's why everything just,
01:39they approve all the payments at treasury.
01:41Because if you approve all the payments,
01:43you don't get complaints.
01:45And they're also gonna address the deficit.
01:46So we've got a $2 trillion deficit,
01:49and if we don't do something about this deficit,
01:52country's going bankrupt.
01:55It's really astounding that the interest payments alone
02:00on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget,
02:04which is shocking,
02:05because we spent a lot of money on defense.
02:08But if that just keeps going,
02:10we're essentially gonna bankrupt the country.
02:12If there's not a good feedback loop from the people
02:15to the government,
02:17and if you have rule of the bureaucrat,
02:20if the bureaucracy is in charge,
02:22then what meaning does democracy actually have?
02:26If the people cannot vote,
02:28and have their will be decided
02:29by their elected representatives
02:32in the form of the President and the Senate and the House,
02:36then we don't live in a democracy,
02:37we live in a bureaucracy.
02:39So it's incredibly important
02:41that we close that feedback loop,
02:42we fix that feedback loop,
02:44and that the public,
02:45the public's elected representatives,
02:47the President, the House and the Senate,
02:49decide what happens,
02:51as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
02:54You're detractors, Mr. Musk,
02:58including a lot of Democrats.
03:00I have detractors?
03:01You do, sir.
03:02I don't believe it.
03:03Say that you're orchestrating
03:05a hostile takeover of government,
03:07and doing it in a non-transparent way.
03:09What's your response to that criticism?
03:12Well, first of all,
03:14you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public.
03:18The public voted,
03:21we have a majority of the public voting for President Trump.
03:25We won the House, we won the Senate.
03:30The people voted for major government reform.
03:34There should be no doubt about that.
03:36That was on the campaign,
03:38the President spoke about that at every rally.
03:40The people voted for major government reform,
03:43and that's what people are gonna get.
03:44They're gonna get what they voted for.
03:46A lot of times, people that don't get what they voted for,
03:50but in this presidency,
03:51they are gonna get what they voted for,
03:53and that's what democracy's all about.
03:55Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify
03:57and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest
04:00that you may have.
04:01Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself?
04:04What are the checks and balances that are in place
04:06to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?
04:10Well, we actually are trying to be
04:11as transparent as possible.
04:13In fact, our actions,
04:14we post our actions to the Doge handle on X
04:19and to the Doge website.
04:21So all of our actions are maximally transparent.
04:23In fact, I don't think there's been,
04:25I don't know of a case where an organization's
04:28been more transparent than the Doge organization.
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