Trump 2.0: The Musk-Trump Bromance

0:06Molly Ball, Senior Political Correspondent. How are you? I'm good, Ryan. How are you doing? I'm good. So today I want to talk about Doge. Last year when Elon Musk started talking about the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge, I wasn't sure how big of a deal it would actually be because it almost seemed like it was a joke at first. I mean, you know, it's named after a dog meme. But less than a month into Trump's presidency, Doge and Elon Musk have actually been one of the most significant forces in the Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, he seems to be everywhere. And Washington is still sort of stunned by how ubiquitous he is and how much wide-ranging personal latitude he seems to have been given to just roam around the White House doing stuff.

0:56On the other hand, we don't really know what power he has because his role is so poorly defined and may be reined in by some of these court decisions. So it's a bit of a mystery. A mystery that we will try to solve.

1:19From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knutson. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, February 14th.

1:30Coming up, doge. It used to be just a meme, and now it's taking apart the federal government. We'll also talk about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the mayor of New York, Canada, Greenland, Gaza. Stay tuned.

2:01All right, I want to start with this appearance Elon Musk made in the Oval Office alongside President Trump on Tuesday. Or I should say Elon Musk and his four-year-old son X. This is X. And he's a great guy. High IQ. He's a high IQ individual. And he's got this cool train he's got. So thank you very much. We had a busy day today. Musk did most of the talking. And this was really the first time he had taken any questions from reporters about the work he's doing with Doge. We'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead. Sure. So at a high level, if you say, what is the goal of Doge, and I think a significant part of the presidency, is to restore democracy.

2:49And his overall message seemed to be that he was finding all these instances of corruption and government waste, and that Doge was getting rid of the bureaucracy and restoring democracy. It was such an incredible visual, wasn't it? I mean, to have Elon Musk sort of towering over the president and answering questions almost on his behalf, it really sort of visually summarized the way in which he does seem to have become, in a lot of people's minds, a sort of co-president, someone with, you know, the power befitting a world leader. and to have, you know, his cute little son sort of rampaging around the room as if he owned the place.

3:31It's sort of as if both of them owned the place. Well, if you don't have a feedback group, okay, we'd have to, if you, if you, sorry, I tell you gravitas can be difficult sometimes. So I want to bring in our colleague Tim Higgins, who arguably knows Elon Musk better than anyone at the Wall Street Journal. Tim, you've covered Elon for how many years now? Ten? I don't even know at this point. It's been many years. Several years. Multiple years. You've written a book about the early days of Tesla, and you're at a column right now for The Wall Street Journal that's mostly about Elon Musk. So thank you for joining us.

4:07Thank you. So, Tim, I said earlier how surprised I was about how big of a deal Doge has become, but does what's happening right now and the way Elon Musk is going about it surprise you, given what you know about him? I mean, let's talk about the Oval Office press conference. except for the location and the visuals and having the president next to him. Listening to it, it felt like it could have been one of the quarterly calls he does as the Tesla CEO. This is the Elon Musk that investors have known for a very long time, where he sells his vision for his companies and for his business ideas. The difference here is he was selling that vision for the government.

4:49This is the way he operates. He's not a bit player in the background. He wants to run things. And the way he's known to run things, as he would put it, is pretty hardcore. He's known for thinking big, but also making drastic cuts and being disruptive and also being pretty tough on his employees. One of the things about Musk is that most of his companies are startups. He's green shooting it. He's creating it the way he wants to go. But there are some examples of when he takes over and Twitter is the best in late 2022. Shock and awe immediately taking over, getting rid of the top executives. than cleaning house, getting rid of eventually 80 % of the employees, slashing expenses.

5:28And when you look at Doge, I see some similarities. Going through agency by agency, trying to figure out where the money is going specifically, and looking for people that can get on board with the vision for government 2.0. Can I ask you something about the Twitter example, though? Because, yes, he did a lot of the same things that we now see him doing with the government. But was it successful? I mean, isn't Twitter now a smaller, less profitable company than it was when he bought it? Well, it's a different company. It is a totally different company. Even by name, it is now X. Right. It's not Twitter.

6:03Is that going to be the new name for the United States of America, like UXA or something? It's the everything app. The everything country. Look, Twitter, when he took it over, was a trouble coming. I mean, this is a company that hadn't been really financially successful in the previous 10 years. It needed a change, and he brought a change. Now, is it the right change or is it a better business? That's to be determined. It's a work in progress. But even the most recent financial data that our colleagues at the Journal have uncovered would suggest it's doing better now than it was in those early days when he took it over.

6:42This is not a company. I mean, the U.S. government, of course, is not a company that he owns. I mean, he's a, what is this technical status, a quasi-government employee at this point? Special government employee, I think, is the term. Special government employee. But like, how will this, the Silicon Valley strategy of just sort of moving fast and breaking things, is that going to translate to government in the same way that it does when he's the sole owner of a company that he, you know, has taken private? Well, you hit it on the head there. I mean, the biggest difference between Twitter and the government is he owned Twitter or he controlled Twitter.

7:14He doesn't control the government. You know, there are lots of stakeholders that have a say in everything, whether it's Congress, there's the judiciary that gets to weigh in on some of this. His word is not the law like it might be at his companies. And that's one of the big differences, to say the least. It's also, as you kind of alluded to at the beginning of the show, it's unclear exactly how much power he has. What do you think Elon Musk wants out of this? Like, what do you view as his motivation here? I think we have to take him at his word. He is kind of a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve and his opinions on his feed.

7:52And he has been very vocal in the last few years that the government has just become run amok, if you will, with too many regulations. I've heard him time and time again over the years talk about regulations being an impediment for business, in particular his experience at SpaceX and at Tesla. These are highly regulated industries he's playing in. And he has huge ambitions, whether it's Tesla, where he wants to bring out driverless cars, where this is a kind of a gray area of regulation, that it would be very helpful to have somebody in the White House and in power kind of usher this technology in.

8:27He has pointed to things like the EPA that he feels like have been slowing him down. And these are huge issues in his mind, apparently so big of issues that he is willing to kind of get into government, personally roll up his sleeves and start weeding that garden, if you will. Musk has been making a lot of claims about the kind of wasteful spending that Doge is finding. And they've been posting these screenshots on X of line items that they say look suspicious. But there doesn't actually seem to be that much detail about what the money is actually being used for. So what do you make of that and the way Musk is communicating what Doge is doing?

9:06I mean, Elon Musk is a master marketer. one of the superpowers that he's had as an entrepreneur is selling his vision for the future of aerospace, the future of cars to customers, but more importantly, investors who have funded that kind of the development of those companies until they could kind of get off the ground. And it's been time and time again out there kind of pushing the narrative of where things could be. And what I see him doing with Doge seems to be like a straight from the playbook. He's creating the appearance of momentum. Even though it's not clear that these are actual victories, it is showing the world that he's doing stuff, right?

9:44He can point to whatever tweet or whatever day's victory and say, look what we're doing. There's corruption. There's fraud. Look at this misspending. This is why we're here. You know, hang on for the ride because we're going to get rid of all this stuff in the long run. Musk is certainly creating the appearance of momentum, but how successful do you think his effort will ultimately be in shrinking the size of the federal government? I think, you know, in Washington, there's a bit of cynicism and skepticism about it. You know, every few years we get people come here saying, I have this dramatically better idea for how the whole thing can be run.

10:22And then they take a look at the actual system and realize, like, yeah, you can find a thing here or there that maybe you wouldn't have authorized. But these government efficiency, you know, blue ribbon panels and congressional committees and so on have been looking to root out waste, fraud and abuse for decades now. And they generally do not find that you can dramatically reduce the size of the federal government if you want it to keep doing the same things. We've seen already some Republicans quietly trying to refund some of the programs that they've seen getting destroyed because their constituents' interests are at stake.

10:58For example, there's a food program that buys American farm products and uses them for food aid overseas. Some Republicans in the Senate are trying to resurrect that because it was killed in the elimination of USAID. So I think the idea that Musk is going to have a radical and lasting effect on the structure or the competence of the federal government, I would say people in D.C. are a bit skeptical about that just because many have tried. And it doesn't tend to be quite as easy as they think it's going to be. It is kind of the Elon Musk strategy that he's deployed, especially at SpaceX and at Tesla.

11:39It's like, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, get rid of everything, everything that you possibly can. And then if the rocket ship blows up, okay, add that one thing back. And it seems like he's applying that same kind of strategy to the federal government. He would like to get it down to the very core, and he gets to the first principles approach, this idea of just because we've done something the way we have in the past, this cliche thinking doesn't mean we should be doing it in the future. And you kind of get to the government, and there's not just generations, but centuries of why things have developed the way they are, and you go in and just blow it up, that's going to make a lot of hits hurt.

12:17Yeah, you know, I think everybody sort of understands the idea of, you know, taking a whack at some of these entrenched bureaucracies. I think where you get a lot of concern is in the parts of the government that see themselves as sort of zero fail, so to speak, right? I mean, where you can't afford a mistake in something like national security. You can't just take down all of our defenses, wait for a terrorist attack to happen and then say, oops, that's where we should have put a patch. So I think there is a lot of concern in various areas of the federal government that feel like they can't afford to have a mistake that puts people's lives and livelihoods at risk.

12:54And that's how you find out that actually we did need that function of the government to be operating and fully staffed. One of the things that I found interesting during this press event with Musk and Trump in the Oval Office was that almost every time Trump chimed in, it was to criticize the judges that were issuing rulings that are slowing things down. Much, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it. And the only way we're going to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty sad for our country.

13:24I don't understand how it could even work. You know, there's been a lot of talk and commentary about the potential for a constitutional crisis if the administration does not respect judicial decisions, if they decide to simply ignore something that a court has told them to do. Vance has tweeted this. He has previously made comments to this effect. And you have Musk saying, you know, questioning the legitimacy of these courts to rule. So what I found the most striking was that when Trump was asked this question, he repeatedly said, we will respect the judge's decisions. We'll appeal. And we think we'll win eventually.

14:01So, yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and will appeal. And I think a lot of sort of constitutional scholars breathe a sigh of relief at that just because the potential consequences are quite serious for our democracy. I want to talk about the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The other day, Elon Musk posted on X, I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man. I mean, happy Valentine's Day right there. Yeah, I wonder if they exchanged cards. But Tim, what do you make of the relationship between them? I mean, Musk has not had to deal with someone as powerful as the president in any of his companies before.

14:43You know, you kind of watch this relationship develop over the past months. And it seems to be that Musk is putting a lot of effort and a lot of attention into trying to nurture it in a way that it's almost like a company or a business of his or an idea. He clearly has ambitions for things that he wants to accomplish with the government and sees in the president a vessel, if you will, to get those things accomplished. Who needs who more? I think a lot of people come to Trump and they're completely dependent on him, you know, for power or the appearance of power and so on. And so Trump can just fire those people and then they're left with nothing.

15:21Elon, you know, as Tim has been saying, not only did Elon provide hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump get elected, but he's bringing his own staff to this effort to, you know, clean out the government. He has his own platform in X and his ability to control the narrative in a way that I think Trump finds familiar and impressive as well. So it is hard to imagine, you know, an amicable divorce just because their interests are so bound up together at this point. All right, cool. Thanks so much, Tim. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about stopping corruption laws, the ones that prevent American companies from bribing foreign officials.

16:23This week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that put a pause on enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is a law that prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials to gain or retain business. What's the Trump administration's rationale for doing this? So the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act essentially says if you are an American company and you're doing business overseas, you're not allowed to pay bribes to, you know, corrupt governments or officials in other countries. Of course, this is a very common way of doing business in all sorts of countries all over the world.

16:58But the idea is that it is not legal for American businesses to be engaging in this. And so Trump, in taking this action, said that basically it cast this as a regulation that was inhibiting American business practices, which, of course, it does. It's much harder to do business in a lot of places if you're not allowed to pay bribes. But it is a significant tension or irony in the whole sort of drain the swamp mantra that Trump has taken up that he is undoing a lot of the mechanisms that are aimed at precisely that, preventing corruption. How have people in Washington reacted to this change? Well, I think, you know, most of the reaction to Trump breaks down on partisan lines.

17:45And so Democrats and critics of the administration say this proves that, you know, he's a liar and a hypocrite. He's corrupt. He just wants the corruption that favors him. But, you know, Trump's fans and supporters and most Republicans say, look, this is about the deregulatory agenda. This is about making it easier for companies to do business and getting rid of regulations that are not actually useful, but just get in the way of business and progress and prosperity.

18:19Trump also issued a pardon for former Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, who'd been convicted of corruption charges about 15 years ago. And then Trump's Justice Department also pushed to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who'd been fighting those charges. How do you see these two actions fitting into Trump's vision for the justice system? It was very interesting, particularly the Eric Adams case. Now, Rod Blagojevich has been a Trump ally for a while now. His sentence was actually commuted during Trump's first term. Eric Adams has also been indicted on corruption charges in New York City and since then has been making sort of Trump-friendly noises about things like immigration enforcement.

19:02And in fact, in instructing these charges to be dropped, there was nothing about the charges being unfair or ill-conceived. It was all about needing the mayor of New York City to help deliver on Trump's agenda, particularly when it came to immigration. I should point out that the Justice Department said that it's, quote, not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams' assistance on immigration enforcement. At the same time, we have seen the Trump administration redeploy resources to focus on immigration enforcement first and foremost across the country. That's right. And we also had this week the newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing that the Justice Department is actually suing multiple states, accusing them of not having properly enforced immigration law.

19:52All right, so finally, we've got a question from a listener from Noah in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. He wants to know what you, Molly, think about Trump's comments about taking over new territories, like making Canada the 51st state, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, buying Greenland, and taking over Gaza. Hey, Noah, thank you so much for your question. I think this is something that has a lot of people in Washington puzzled because it has been a consistent theme of Trump's remarks starting after the election. But it was not something that he talked about at all during the campaign.

20:30So it sort of came out of left field in terms of delivering on campaign promises, right? Here he campaigned on primarily, you know, immigration and inflation. But as soon as he wins the election, he's talking about, well, I want to get Greenland. I want to turn Canada into a state. It's very ambitious. And so I think conceptually, that is where it is coming from, is this idea of American ambition. You know, at some of Trump's rallies, particularly towards the end of the campaign, he had these signs that said, dream big again. And he does have this idea that America has become too sort of cramped and pessimistic, that we don't think about possibilities in a big way.

21:13We don't think about a country that could, you know, reach for the moon and stars, plant the flag on Mars, as he said in his inaugural speech. In some ways, he is very serious about all of these things, right? Not only has the former Gulf of Mexico been officially renamed on all the government maps. And Google Maps, if you live in the U.S., it now says Gulf of America. Google Maps and Apple Maps. But this week, reporters for the Associated Press were repeatedly kicked out of events at the White House because that news service has not gone along with this change and has not started using Gulf of America in its news reports.

21:53Also because to say Mexico has not gone along with this change, they're still calling it. So it's not sort of an internationally recognized name at this point. Yeah, and we've all been learning a lot about how these changes get made and who's in charge of them and who gets to say what the name is. On the other hand, with something like saying that we're going to take over Gaza and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East, no one is quite sure what Trump means by this and how serious he is. And there was a quite uncomfortable moment in the Oval Office with the King of Jordan this week. You know, Trump saying these things and saying that Jordan is going to accept large numbers of Palestinians.

22:31It puts him in a very uncomfortable spot. Jordan has already accepted huge amounts of Palestinian refugees. And Trump proposing something like this has the potential to destabilize the entire Middle East. But we now see, you know, Arab governments coming to the table proposing different solutions. And so some of the intent of seemingly crazy ideas like this may be simply to shake things up and get people talking in a way they haven't been talking in the past about ways to solve, you know, an intractable problem that has been, as Trump said, you know, leaving a lot of people in dire misery for generations now.

23:13and no one seems to be proposing any solutions that could actually sort of break that stalemate and solve the problem on behalf of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. All right, Molly, well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Brian. I'll see you next week. See ya. Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournalatwsj.com. That's thejournalatwsj.com. Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Catherine Whelan, with help from Tatiana Zamis.

24:01Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudsen. This episode was engineered by Nathan Singapak. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard Additional music in this episode by Peter Leonard Nathan Singapak and So Wiley Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher Artwork by James Walton Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning See you then