Elon Musk ditches DOGE

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4.1 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode, The Washington Post’s Libby Casey, James Hohmann and JM Rieger discuss the ongoing fallout between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet and administration officials, as well as the CEO's announcement Tuesday that he will step away from his U.S. DOGE Service responsibilities as a "special government employee."

Musk, a GOP megadonor and close adviser to Trump, has seen his net worth crumble in the aftermath of the current trade war, as his Tesla stock plummets amongst a shaky quarterly earnings report that showed a 71 percent drop in profits.

Musk touted a proposal to cut $2 trillion from the annual federal budget on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, and while his DOGE team has caused chaos with numerous job cuts and potentially illegal access to sensitive data information, the actual savings achieved by the DOGE initiative may be just a fraction of what was promised.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/24/elon-musk-doge-scott-bessent-tesla/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=can-he-do-that

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/18/irs-shapley-bessent-musk/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=can-he-do-that

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Bring Your Kids to Work Day at the Washington Post.
0:04.0	Welcome to Sidebar.
0:05.0	Look what happened.
0:09.0	Is this crazy?
0:10.0	We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history.
0:16.0	Make America great Hickley.
0:19.0	How can you be against them?
0:31.1	Elon Musk's days in the federal government may be limited, or maybe not. He slashed and burned through American government departments and jobs through his work at Doge. He's seen his company,
0:36.3	Tesla's profits plummet and Tesla showrooms
0:39.2	protested. So if and when Elon Musk does leave, what happens to Doge and his relationship
0:46.3	with President Trump? We'll talk about it today on Sidebar from the Washington Post. I'm your host,
0:51.2	Libby Casey, and I'm with James Homan, editorial writer and columnist and
0:55.9	J.M. Rieger, senior video journalist who covers politics. Elon Musk was never expected to stay in
1:02.6	government service forever, J.M. Let's talk about how it's always been intended to be time limited and why.
1:13.2	Yeah, Musk was brought in as what's known as a special government employee. And what that means is that he has a limited amount of time,
1:17.3	130 days technically. And but that means he doesn't have to go through the whole financial
1:22.5	disclosure and kind of ethics divestment process that a normal government employee would have to do.
1:28.4	Administrations have used this for years for various administrations, but the way that the Trump
1:33.8	administration is using Musk in this role has been unusual from the start just in terms of
1:38.8	what he's being used for in the U.S. Doge service.
1:42.1	But on top of that, what is strange is we don't know for sure
1:46.7	the end date of that 130 day from inauguration.
	...

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