WTW80: Elon Musk's DOGE is Desperate for Approval

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 80. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is my amazing wife, Lydia Smith. How are you doing? Oh, yeah. It's more like I took an episode on, you know?

0:00:48 Lydia: I'm back. I took one episode off. Yeah. I wasn't here for 79. Yeah, that's true. That's true, you had some things to say.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I just can't have you looking over my shoulder, you know? It's too hard to, yeah, strong entrance. I like it. I liked this energy. Yeah, what are we going to be talking about today? I'm so glad I know that's a reference to something and not you losing your mind because it's

0:01:02 Lydia: But I'm back, baby. Hello, everybody. Oh, my God. Well, I think I'm coming with strong energy. Some people might call it like big balls energy because. Oh, yeah, I know. It's usually like every recording. No, no, it's not. But we're going to be talking about DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, specifically because the team assembled and went for an interview with Brett Baier on Special Report late last week. Mm hmm.

0:01:26 Thomas: Not language you would ever use oh wow so brett bear's doxing them then shouldn't he be killed or something like according to elon bring on a guest okay dial them in

0:01:46 Lydia: Well, it's interesting, the faces that have shown up, but I'm not going to spoil anything else because we're gonna have someone else explain how this interview was put together. Come on in my closet.

0:01:59 Thomas: All right well there's so much to look forward to after the break patreon.com/where-there's-woke please support the show uh like I said we do have a big project in the works so much recorded we're going to be really exciting to finally publish all that but uh lots of good reasons to join support the Show thanks so much your our supporters on patreon.com/where-there's-woke as a token of our gratitude here is not the auto ad that everyone else is about to hear okay so where's where's our guest which is our big illustrious guest that's what you do with your time geez yeah sure false

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0:02:28 Lydia: All right. Well before the guest joins us, I just want to explain a little bit about why I want to talk about this story. So I was, you know, doing what I normally do, look around at like Daily Wire, Washington Times, look at, yeah, because this is my job. And when I was looking at The Federalist, there was an article titled Six Unbelievably Scammy Federal Practices Doge Staff Reveal in Fox Interview. And right, exactly. And so that caught my attention because I was like, ooh, like an old fashioned debunk. Maybe we have an opportunity to to check this out here. And just to highlight really fast for folks, this was written by Joy Pullman, who is the executive editor at The Federalist. She is a Hillsdale graduate, co -founder of a Christian classical school, and her latest book is called False Flag, Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America. So serious person here. Here. But it caught my eye. Yeah, the pride flag. Yes.

0:03:23 Thomas: Flag oh okay the pride flag but what's the second part of the meaning it's a double meaning so you've got false flag as in it's a reference to the queer flag got it great excellent you're doing literature but false flag was there a false flag operation that gay people undertook or queer people undertooked to no are you yeah that's fair that's far you don't know if they undertook a false flag operation it's just one of those like trying to make a witty title but like I don't I mean maybe she has something for that, but I don't. Anyway. All right. What is with Megan fucking Kelly? She was on the New York times interview podcast the other day. I actually listened to it and it's like, cool. This is pointless. Why were we here? What did we learn? Nothing. Stop interviewing liars who just lie. There's no, what is that going to do? Well, we're hearing from the other side. Okay. Well, you can hear from the other side, just have my kids make shit up for you it doesn't it's not useful anyway okay

0:03:47 Lydia: Potentially. I don't know. I haven't read the book. I Don't Know. Yeah.

0:04:02 Lydia: Yeah but this all stems on this interview with Brett Baer on March 27, 2025 where he interviewed a handful of folks from the Doge team on Special Report and to to introduce us to this interview, I'm actually going to invite Megyn Kelly. Come on in. Yeah, I was watching that, actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:04:45 Clip: Open the show talking about Elon on with Brett Baer and some members of the Doge team last night. And you know, I did wonder in watching it, why didn't we see this earlier? These guys are amazing.

0:04:59 Thomas: What no already no no

0:05:00 Clip: Like this is exactly, we should all be on our hands and knees at night thanking God that men, and I presume there are women too, they weren't on the set last night, are willing to take time off from their real jobs and real lives and do this for us they were all really just public servants go ahead sean but to your point the caliber of these people when he was talking about when brett bear was telling him so you co-founded uh airbnb you're the cfo of morgan stanley these the credentials of these we talked about this a little on the morning meeting this morning that it was the illumination of of just the it wasn't like you know finding some buried treasure the guy was like yeah we found out that the department of hhs has 40 cfos 40 cfo I mean 40 cios chief information

0:05:11 Thomas: Just men oh we gotta worship them yeah okay

0:05:24 Lydia: This is Sean Spicer, folks. Yeah pin in that.

0:05:49 Clip: Officer there are 4.3 4.6 million government credit cards and 2.1 million employees there's obvious things that are like that doesn't make sense that doesn t compute 8 000 uh american federal workers can retire in a given month because that's all the system can handle because because it has to take a manila envelope going down a mine. That's how many envelopes can go down in a month.

0:06:13 Thomas: Sure that sounds

0:06:17 Lydia: Okay, so pin in all of that. We're going to talk talk about all of those things. Yeah. And then I do have have one more clip here because, you know, Megyn Kelly's surprise and, you Know, how amazing these men are. And I presume there are women that work at Doge too. They're just not allowed on TV. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But she goes on later to describe kind of what she was expecting because of the mainstream media and how they all talk Talk about Doge.

0:06:19 Thomas: Like yeah then all of those definitely accurate very rigorous claims yeah yeah we don't we're not seeing them right now but there's gotta be women just like uh Elon has to have some female children other than his one trans female child who hates him. He's got to have others, right? Or we're just not seeing him.

0:06:54 Clip: In my head, like the way they were being described by the media, it was like, I have pictured like these dope-smoking, hacky sack-kicking, beanie-wearing, foggy- Right. Put him in tie-dye shirts.

0:07:03 Thomas: That's a different trope.

0:07:08 Lydia: Tie-dye shirt. They're so out of touch. Yeah.

0:07:08 Thomas: What are you guys talking about? You idiots. Yeah, it's like the most, I know it's a minor thing, but I'm so glad you played it. That is so fucking out of touch. What are you talking about, hippies, like playing hacky sack with tie-dye shirts? You think that's who went to work for Elon fucking Musk, the richest man in the universe?

0:07:08 Clip: There's TV, these guys-

0:07:21 Lydia: Tie-dyed shirt. What year is it? Yeah. Who said, I hope you like working a million hours a week because you're not going to get time off ever. Yeah.

0:07:33 Thomas: What the f - You idiots. No, it would be like, if you're going to do the tropey thing, like, oh, I thought it was a kid in his basement, 19 -year -old pimple -faced kid who harasses women on the side. And then it turns out, no, that is who it is. So it's like, that's called being in touch.

0:07:51 Clip: Were they wearing Crocs or Birkenstocks in your mind?

0:07:54 Thomas: Crocs? What are you - Birkenstocks?

0:07:57 Clip: I never got down below the ankle in picturing that.

0:07:59 Thomas: What are you talking about

0:07:59 Clip: But I definitely, I could smell the aroma. They're not that at all. These are actually really accomplished, badass, professional guys who are super articulate on top of their game. Now, I'm sure they sent their best for the Brett Baer interview.

0:08:03 Thomas: Okay that part

0:08:14 Lydia: Yeah. There you go.

0:08:15 Clip: There may be guys who better match my description.

0:08:19 Thomas: Might no that no actually no again

0:08:19 Clip: But, you know, chief among them was Elon with some very...

0:08:20 Lydia: All right. We can stop. Yeah. So I think this I just really wanted Megyn Kelly to say it. Exactly.

0:08:22 Thomas: Oh god so good I love how she keeps accidentally making the boy yeah there's no women uh weird but I'm sure they're somewhere and also I'm sure they just sent mouthpieces for an interview

0:08:33 Lydia: Yeah, they probably sent these people for a reason. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you why. This is pure propaganda. So, I think, like, a lot of folks after they watch this interview, they're like, oh, this is telling everybody that that poll numbers are not good for Doge, right? Because now they're having to go on this, like, public relations offensive.

0:08:35 Thomas: That for by the way the interview that's taken for even she acknowledges like why didn't they do this sooner you know like yeah we've hired like actors to do it oh my god I wouldn't

0:08:56 Lydia: Almost, almost. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about who's who because we have a lot to get through with the claims, our main purpose for this show today. But I do want to kind of just touch on some of these things. Elon Musk was obviously there. Surprise, surprise. Notably, Amy Gleeson, who was supposedly the acting administrator of Doge according to the government, was not there. But Elon Musk was, who is supposedly not working for Doge. Steve Davis, who is considered Musk's right -hand man. There's a great profile with this organization called the Revolving Door Project, and I'll link that in the show notes. Yeah, I know. But he is someone who's been with Elon Musk for quite some time. He's described as the day -to -day leader of Doge, reportedly the main person in charge, except for the appointed head, Amy Gleeson, who's never there and never chimes in. Nobody knows. She's just, yeah, her LinkedIn is updated. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. So he has worked with Elon Musk very closely with SpaceX. He also worked on X, The Boring Company. He was appointed CEO and president of The Bored Company in 2018. Yeah, Yeah. Not great. Oh, hilarious. Yeah.

0:09:33 Thomas: Use that as an insult on my worst enemy you're elon musk right hand man oh yeah what's uh what's she doing what's he up to she's just a DEI hire how's that one doing but so funny though like the name is so objectively funny how could it not be a good idea for a company you know what kind of an asshole you have to be to be with elon musk that long.

0:10:19 Lydia: Yeah, but he's actually been with Musk since 2002. Yeah. Hard, hard Musk loyalist. I know. I know. Elon Musk has compared him to chemotherapy because of how aggressive he is with cost cutting. Quote, Steve is like chemo. A little chemo can save your life. A lot of chemo could could kill you. So I don't know.

0:10:42 Thomas: I don't, is that how you would describe it? Like, yeah, always in moderation with chemo. It's more like it's a last ditch effort. It's always horrible. And it's elastic effort that might work or might kill you, but it's not about like, yeah. You need a microdose chemo like it. It's a teaspoon full of chemo Oh

0:10:52 Lydia: To try to save your life. Yeah. And might not. Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. There is some thought that he might be the person that's behind the fork in the road emails because he supposedly is the person who was pushing government officials to allow him him to send government -wide emails. And there are, you know, lawsuits involving him when he was involved in the Twitter takeover. In the court documents, it says that he pushed workers to violate rent contracts and demanded they violate local permitting laws to meet cost -cutting goals. He slashed costs in 2007, which led to a rocket mishap at SpaceX. It says that he removed components from SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket that prevented fuel from sloshing inside inside the vehicle. That caused the fuel to unbalance the rocket during a test flight, and it shut down midair before reaching orbit. Yeah, I know, exactly. Yeah. He helped run the super PAC that Musk started for Trump, America PAC. Yeah. Wired reported in 2024 that America PAC door knockers were flown to Michigan, driven in the back of a U -Haul, and told they'd have to pay hotel bills unless they met unrealistic quotas. Yikes. Yeah. He has also served on the board of advisors of the Atlas Society. So dedicated to Ayn Rand's philosophy. Yeah, he's appeared at Ayn Ran conferences. Yeah.

0:11:46 Thomas: My God. Yeah. I'd start a place. I want cost cutting Rocketry? Like, I just don't just get it right. Hey, cost cut that. Do that.

0:12:16 Thomas: A professional asshole. What's that? Oh, God. I was like, I was just like, I just was hoping they were fond of atlases. It couldn't just be that they have a good old -fashioned love of atlases. It has to be about that stupid fucking book. Quote regular atlasis. Africa. That's all I got. That's the only thing I know from atlaces.

0:12:36 Lydia: Yeah apparently he can quote Atlas Shrugged off the top of his head.

0:12:45 Lydia: Yeah. Now, Steve Davis's right hand man, because every right handman needs a right hand, man, is Brad Smith, who was also at this interview. Brad Smith is involved with the Health and Human Services Agency for, you know, his doge assignment kind of thing. And he is deeply involved with various health and human services businesses. So he was the co -founder of Aspire Health, co - founder of CareBridge, co founder of Main Street Health. And he was on the board of Operation Warp Speed. He, along with other Trump allies like Jared Kushner, apparently pushed the FDA to try and expedite an approval for a blood plasma treatment for COVID -19 ahead of the Republican National Convention in 2020. 20. The NIH was still working on analyses for the treatment safety, and then they publicly objected to approving it too early. So they were really like just pushing for them to cut corners, skip things. Yeah.

0:13:42 Thomas: So they complain about like oh vaccine safety and all this stuff except when it might be convenient for them then they're gonna actually like go faster than the scientists want to

0:13:51 Lydia: Similar to Davis, we have a class action lawsuit here regarding overworking their employees, abusive working conditions that have been reinforced by dozens of negative reviews on websites. These are all very private sector moneymakers, you know. Some other folks that are involved in this are Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause. I mentioned, you know, Revolving Door Project talks about a lot of these folks. But so the Revolbing Door Project is an online database, essentially, like evaluating executive branch appointees. And they have an an entire thing about Doge and kind of like mapping the connections of folks that are working for Doge as people are uncovered, because it's not always very clear, and their connections to musks, businesses, yeah, and tie -dye shirts, yeah. And hacky sex. But they've been serving in a watchdog role for quite some time, and they're not just focused on Doge, but that's kind of where I've been pulling a lot of my information on these people. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and a few other folks that that they haven't been able to put together profiles on again, because we're finding out these names, you know, on a day to day basis, if they accidentally get caught up in something, or if they happen to be pulled for an interview like this. Joe Gabia, who is the co founder of Airbnb, he's worth $8 .8 billion estimated, serves on the board of Tesla. He also serves on on the board of Airbnb, but just as an advisory role. Aram Moghadassi is a software engineer with X and he is involved with the Social Security Administration, which we'll be talking about a lot here. And then I just want to highlight this one person because I found an amazing story that I need to talk about. Tyler Hawson. He is a former oil executive. And yeah,

0:14:17 Thomas: What's what's that again right they're hiding behind their birkenstocks and tie -dye shirts what year is it oh boy yeah oh revolving door so like as in because lobbyists and stuff yeah yeah that's That's right. I remember now. An oil executive named Tyler? Huh. What an age we live in. You can't have Daniel Day -Lewis play Tyler. I'm an oil man. Name's Tyler. That doesn't... No, sorry. What?

0:15:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I Cody and Chad. And so he is obviously assigned to the Department of Interior because that's the role of the Department Of Interior in this administration is extracting as much oil as we can possibly from the ground. He apparently is really getting along with Doug Burgum, who is the secretary over there, and he's now serving as the acting assistant secretary of policy management So I don't know if he has officially two hats working for Doge and also working for the Secretary of Interior. But in late January, he went to California with some folks from Interior and they toured this pumping plant called the Jones Pumping Plant. And after their visit, Doge posted on Twitter, quote, congratulations to the administration and DOI's Bureau of Reclamation for more than doubling the federally pumped water flowing towards Southern California in less than 72 hours. Yeah. Was an honor for the Doge team to work with you. Great job.

0:16:54 Thomas: Okay. Okay. I have a feeling that if it were that easy... Have you ever thought of turning the pumps to double mode?

0:17:00 Lydia: Yeah. So what actually happened was the pumps were down for routine maintenance. And there are FOIA records where they found out that Tyler Haasen texted a Bureau of Reclamation official to ask what days the Jones pumps were coming back online when the routine maintenance was done. Timed the visit for it. Yep. Yep. And then they were scheduled to go offline again for more maintenance. So he timed his visit specifically to be in that window. So we can believe everything that comes out of these people's mouths. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

0:17:24 Thomas: Oh, so you could go visit and claim. And then it's like, boy, they only work when you're here. This is amazing. I guess he has to live there now. He has some super power, these fucking bullshit, phony pieces of crap. It's so pathetic. It's North Korea. It's insane. Yeah, we're still in the preambling. Yeah, or they do. And yeah, the mainstream media fails miserably at it. Yeah, I just

0:17:47 Lydia: It is. It is, and you'll definitely see this as we are listening to some of these clips and we're going through some of this. I know. I know there is so much here. But I do think that that is like such a great microcosm of what these people are. They're fake. They manufacture their accomplishments and then no one catches it and no one calls them out on it and they're able to snowball. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're ready to start jumping into some of these claims. We're going to play some clips here. We'll do some fact checking together and we'll have fun, I guess. I mean, I have fun doing this stuff, but hopefully you all have fun, too.

0:18:36 Thomas: Keep thinking about like I got all of a sudden on the mainstream media thing and it's like they will cover stuff like this. But I think what they don't do is they're like they have memento disease like what should be happening before we even get to it what should me happening is the minute you learn something like that oh you're the one who tried to claim that the pumps were double because you were there they should never be able to speak credibly again like the me the whole media should go wait are you the idiot that like tried to lie and they should say it every like if it was your your personal life like if it was your personal life and someone lied that crazily you wouldn't just like well another day you know let's move on like that would have an impact but because they all have memento disease even if they do cover these things they'll be like well decorum dictates that now it's another day another thing's happening we better get comment from this person it's like no they should just not be there anymore they should either be ridiculed every time you go to them or they should never be interviewed again but then they're like well then that would mean we can't ever interview anyone in the administration frustration but like maybe that's what you have to do or you have to actually be a tough interview every single time because otherwise we just lose all the context we don't have proper context for what these liars these people are but okay I'll contain it myself and we can get to the lies dang I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about seeing the size of his balls like I was hoping like he should wear they should have done an interview and he wears like tight pants that like stuffs like a grapefruit in there yeah oh sure one billion yeah sure

0:18:40 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we will get to the lies. And again, notably, no big balls here. No racist L .S. up there either. Really emphasize. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK, this first claim is titled A Nearly One Billion Dollar Survey for No Reason. So we'll listen to Elon talk about this. Yeah.

0:20:20 Clip: We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more, casually. For example, the simple survey that was literally a 10-question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey cost you about $10,000, the government was being charged almost a billion A billion dollars for a simple online survey, do you like the national park?

0:20:41 Thomas: Casually um no no there's no no way no way that's true

0:20:47 Clip: And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey.

0:20:51 Thomas: Yeah I bet that's all

0:20:54 Lydia: So what's your what's Your initial feeling there?

0:20:55 Thomas: True well it's like it's there's nothing to even go on because it's just dumb like there's no way that's true I don't what What is

0:21:02 Lydia: So this is a statement that he is claiming where it's a survey that they're contracting for saying that it was one 10 question survey for. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:12 Thomas: For a billion dollars? I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure that happened. They got bids and one was 10 billion. I think that's a little high. The other one was a billion. They're like, yeah, OK.

0:21:22 Lydia: So when the New York Times was fact -checking this, they looked at other posts from Doge. And one of the posts that Doge shared was that the Interior Department was dissolving its federal consulting group. And this is a group that's been around since 1987, providing consulting, executive coaching, and survey services. According to the post, the group had had negotiated a $75 million contract to design satisfaction surveys. And so Doge said, we canceled $830 million in unsigned similar contracts that were going to be awarded by the group. But when you look at the Doge website, where supposedly they are posting all of their receipts, pin in that, we're going to talk about that a little bit later too, there is no contract for $75 billion. There's no contract for $8 30 million, like they're saying, or a billion None of that exists at all. There are contracts for surveys that were canceled that are posted there, but one is through the Labor Department. And that is about $32 million to survey agricultural workers. The Department of Veterans Affairs, where they have a contract for customer service surveys, that's about $20 million. And another Veterans Affairs contract for patient satisfaction survey.

0:22:34 Thomas: Now, do we know the details of those contracts?

0:22:38 Lydia: No.

0:22:39 Thomas: But we can assume that's not for one survey. Like it's I imagine is it like an ongoing maybe relationship or. Yeah, yeah.

0:22:42 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, it's probably for multiple years. Yeah. I mean, like when we've talked about contracting previously, it's often for terms of several years because like you're not going to want to start and stop a contract in the span of a year. Yeah.

0:22:58 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine with the work involved, you don't want to just sign on for like a very temporary thing and try to set up for it. And then it's, yeah, okay. So it's likely, for all we know, could be 10 fucking years or something. Cool. Yeah. But even the Doge website isn't listing? Yeah, yeah. I know that they've had, they've been called out like eight times and then delete stuff and then bring it back and then, yeah。 but he routinely just finds billion dollar contracts for nothing and

0:23:11 Lydia: Yeah. Right. And when we're looking at the Department of Interior canceled contracts specifically, the Doge, you know, wall of receipts, they list three hundred and sixty six canceled contracts. Acts. One hundred and ninety nine of those are listed as zero dollars in savings. Yeah. So how this one billion dollar talking point continues to gain steam is very, very frustrating. This is like number one on this website, the Federalist calling out these things that are like so egregious that the government's doing. No, the Doge website is very problematic. And like I said, We'll get to that. Yeah.

0:23:52 Lydia: Yeah, very transparent. Yep. Additionally, the contracts that are the largest in savings that are attributed to the Department of Interior are for $37 million, $23 .5 million, and $10 .75 million. But apparently, the $23 ,500 ,000 and the $10 ,75 million are actually mislabeled on the Doge website, and they're actually USAID contracts. Contracts so not department of interior casually yeah all

0:24:26 Thomas: Gets rid of just routinely there

0:24:30 Lydia: Right, next up we are going to go to one that I spent quite a bit of time on 15 million fraudulent social security numbers

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0:24:38 Thomas: Aren't even that many numbers nailed it you're done

0:24:42 Clip: The amount of issues that were with the Social Security system are enormous. As an example, there are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social security system. And that's an accurate figure. This has been something that's been identified as a problem, again, preexisting problems since 2008 at least from an IG report.

0:25:03 Thomas: Oh so it's already been identified then what are you doing uh

0:25:06 Clip: So there were some great people working at the Social Security Administration that found this, 2008, and nothing was done. And so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. And so one of the things the Doge team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.

0:25:33 Thomas: Wow hardcore death master file oh added so that would mean they're not dead okay so that'd be the opposite of savings right yeah yeah

0:25:33 Lydia: So they cite this 2008 oig report and and really like what is captured in that report is focusing on the Social Security Administration's death master file. And there I know. Now, there are more than three million deaths reported annually, and most death reports are provided by funeral homes or friends or relatives of the deceased. Those are considered first party death reports and are automatically considered verified. Now in the 2008 OIG report, report, they looked at evaluating any errors that were erroneous folks that were added to the death master file. And yeah, they're not actually dead. And so the issue, yeah, right. So the issue is kind of happening both ways and where they erroneously add people to the death master file or they haven't updated somebody in the death MasterFile. Now, I said when the death is reported by a funeral home or a friend or relative, those are considered verified immediately, they can enter in that data immediately. If there is something where the death is coming through other means, that usually requires some back and forth communication, right? Because you want to verify it. You don't want to accidentally add somebody to this death master file. Yeah. And so there were instances in which, or

0:26:51 Thomas: Yeah. Mm hmm. There is such a thing as like faking your death or just like mistaken identity or, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Same names. OK. Well, and you're saying added. So, again, that's people that if anything, they should be getting checks and aren't. Yeah. So we're talking about savings.

0:27:03 Lydia: Typos, I mean, like there are a number of different things that can happen. Now, when the Social Security Administration looks at their error rate, they found that less than one third of one percent are deaths that need to be corrected in the death master file, like folks that were added that don't need to pee there. That's a very, very, very small number.

0:27:30 Lydia: Right. Right, exactly. And then they would get the back pay. Right?

0:27:34 Thomas: You have to go the other way, which is all kinds of people who should be on there, but but are not on there. Okay is this still in 2008 okay hmm oh really it's a lot and what what period of time per year per what okay now does that I just want to make sure does that mean unique individuals or is that once a month or what like okay

0:27:37 Lydia: So now here's the opposite way. From the Social Security Administration, this is now 2023. I have have some values from 2023 and 2021 from IG reports. So there are about 90 ,000 payments that are issued to people 99 years and older. That is 0 .2 percent of the benefits that are paid out from Social Security. You know, the 90 ,00 number, that's fewer than the number of people that are estimated to be in that age group in the United States, 99 and older, yeah. The data, yeah, I I think it's for the year.

0:28:22 Lydia: I think those are unique. I think the way that this is being provided is unique.

0:28:25 Thomas: Like over the course of that year it's that many unique individuals getting a payment at least one payment is that what it means okay

0:28:33 Lydia: Yes, that is what I understand it to mean. The data that Doge keeps citing here about the number of people that are fraudulent payments from Social Security that are like way too old, et cetera, et cetera. And people have talked about this because this number has been going around a lot. Right. But what they're talking about are records in which there is not a date of death associated with the record. It does not mean that they are receiving benefits. It's just in the death master file, right, where there are records in which there is not a death date entered. This is something that we know they say, hey, they've been looking at this since 2008 and no one's doing anything about it. Well, in 2021, they found that 24 ,000 beneficiaries were receiving $298 million in payments after they had died. But this was not because of fraud. This was because of faults in policy and technician errors, right? The typos that we've been talking about. They were able to recover about $84 million of the money. So, you know, there's still $200 million that wasn't able to be recovered via the Social Security Administration. That, I think, was years. I think that was years in

0:28:54 Thomas: Hmm right wait over the course of what time period? This is a lot of money. Okay. Yeah.

0:29:44 Lydia: 2023. The inspector general report shared that people who are aged 100 or older in the death master file was around 19 million people. But the audit also found that almost none of those people were receiving benefits. If they wanted to fix the database, it was going to cost between five and a half to nine point seven million dollars.

0:30:06 Thomas: Yeah, that's the one I saw.

0:30:06 Lydia: So the Social Security Administration opted to not do that.

0:30:10 Thomas: That's what happens in government. So they make that decision because like, well, this costs more to fix this. And then imagine if they did it the other way, then you'd be like, look at this wasteful spending. $10 million to fix something that wasn't even a problem.

0:30:11 Lydia: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Exactly now the Social Security Administration is also trying to approach this from a policy standpoint so anyone who hits 115 or older they automatically stop payments and they implemented that in 2015. But usually what we're seeing are overpayments to living people when we're talking about, you know, the potential. I know. I know. So usually like when we'RE talking about the Social Security Administration spending too much money than they'RE supposed to, you know, like waste or abuse there, it'S usually because they'RE overpaying living people. And so between 2015 and 2022, $72 billion was paid out that it shouldn't have been.

0:30:38 Thomas: Boy, that ought to save tens of dollars. By the way, spare a thought for that 116 -year -old. I guess there aren't very many of those. Wait, what's the like total that they're paying out year to year?

0:31:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, so that represents, that $72 billion between 2015 and 2022, that represents 0 .84 % of the $8 .6 trillion that they paid out during that period. Yeah yeah yeah ish.

0:31:22 Thomas: Right. Wow. So it's about a trillion point one a year that they'RE paying sort of or trillion point two. Yeah. Okay. It's a lot of money. But like this is again, this is for the whole country. Yeah.

0:31:37 Lydia: 300 plus million people, yeah. Yeah oh I know I know exactly. Yeah I have one more little little bit on Social Security that happened a little bit later in the interview, if you don't mind playing.

0:31:39 Thomas: Like potentially we have a lot. A lot of us. And that's how big a government thing would work. If you split this all off into states or something, all that would mean is that this is like, you know, assuming you kept everything equal, the big numbers scare people. But like, what would be the difference of that versus if you just divided it up by 50 and then it's the same, you know? It like doesn't make a difference. I mean, you can make arguments for like, would there be efficiency administration, but also probably not because then you have like 50 unique systems that people are doing that like there might be a lot of redundancy. And when it comes to like, I don't know, computers, they're actually really good at handling big things. So like making one computer to handle, let's say just for fun, a million things is cheaper than two computers to handle 500 ,000 things each, you know, because there's not usually that limit. Point, I know there's a little abstract, but point is like people get scared by these big numbers, but like there's a lot of people and we're a very wealthy country. There's nothing inherently scary about it. Is there plenty of waste? Probably. Is this fucking team going to find it? I don't think so. Yeah.

0:32:50 Clip: At Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every

0:32:55 Thomas: Sorry, we just had one of the guys in the front that looked, I thought it was Rick Scott for a second, but this bald white guy doing a hard concentration look and then the fingers, you know, when they do the fingers together, fingertips together look you know like ceo speak look like oh yeah but he wasn't talking he was just sitting there looking like I'm so smart I'm still with it like

0:33:17 Clip: Day of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40 percent of the phone calls that they are from fraudsters.

0:33:29 Thomas: Yeah why is that their fault

0:33:30 Lydia: No, no, it's also not accurate. They are misstating commentary from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, what the Social Security Administration has said is that approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank bank information. So it's not 40 percent of calls that come into the Social Security Administration are.

0:33:34 Thomas: Yeah okay well but oh hold on what is that full claim because can we go back or something

0:33:58 Lydia: Yes, go ahead. Go ahead.

0:33:59 Clip: The two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis and also make the experience better and I'll give you one example is at Social Security one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information so when you want to change your bank account you can call Social Security we learned 40% of the phone calls that they are from fraudsters 40% that's right Yes, and they steal people's Social Security, is what happens. They call in, they claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money's flowing. It actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day, every day. And then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security. It's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social security system.

0:35:02 Lydia: So am I interpreting that correctly, that they are saying that. Right. Yeah. But it also, I think, is inaccurate the way that they're stating this, too. Yes. Yes. OK, gotcha.

0:35:05 Thomas: Well the only reason I want to play it is because like for one just the clip we played wouldn't be their So I want to make sure the claim is right. I think what this is doing is actually trying to do some world building around this. So they have to do this fucking alternate reality world building in which there's so much fraud just in general. There's so many ripoff artists because because you ask yourself, well, wait, how are they paying 11 trillion people who are age 150? Well, that must be people fraudulently cashing those checks, right? Because someone would have to be on the other end of that transaction, like they would have to be cashing a check, depositing a check that's fraudulent. And so, like, I think this is part of that world building they're doing. We're like, yeah, 40 percent of the calls they get, that's fraudsters. They're stealing your. So when you don't get your check, it's because of these fraudsters that are actually doing it.

0:35:58 Thomas: Oh, yeah, yeah. The separate issue I'm saying. But like, I wasn't sure what context you're playing that under, because I was like, that's not a claim of savings or a claim of the government doing anything wrong, because if they're receiving calls, what are they doing wrong there? They're just that just means people who try to do identity theft and those kind of crimes, they have to cast a wide net. And there's gonna be a lot of them because they automate a lot of it. And they, they cast a white net because it's not very successful, like it has a low success rate. So yeah, there's going to be huge numbers. Of that. But it sounds like they're not even representing that accurately, you're saying. Yeah. Well, no, it's if you assumed that the only calls they get are exactly the same number. It's like only people who are changing their direct deposit and exactly that many calls is fraudulent versus not. Then it all works out all day, every day. Well. And they start saying it like, yeah, they get calls from people wanting to change their bank thing. It's like, well, okay, so far you've just described normal. That's normal. So people call wanting, people change their banking account sometimes.

0:36:19 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. From the way that I understand that statistic is actually that direct deposit fraud, you know, 100 % direct deposit fraud. 40 % of direct deposit fraud is accomplished by someone calling SSA. It's not that 40 % percent of calls to SSA are direct deposit Fraud.

0:36:53 Lydia: So, yeah. One, as Elon Musk says, it's all day, every day that they're facing this fraud.

0:37:20 Thomas: But everything is described with an air of like, I'm fucking Christopher Columbus. And I'm keeping that comparison on purpose. I'm Christopher Columbus discovering this new world and being like, look at this. And everything is with an air of can you believe this? But most of it is just saying things like, Like, yeah, they're called all day, all day. Not even during business hours. They're just like, okay. So people that's customer service, they, people need to change their bank account. That's normal.

0:37:30 Lydia: Right. I know. And I think the way that the Social Security Administration is handling this now is that if you want to change your bank account information, you need to either use two -factor authentication through their My Social Security service or you need to visit a Social Security office to prove your identity.

0:37:59 Thomas: So it sounds like something that's going to cost the government a little more money, a little more to run it better, which is fine. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it just gives light to the entire premise. Like this isn't something where it's Just always fraud and abuse, fraud and waste. It's like, well, actually, if you want this to be better, maybe you need to spend a little little more money in how you're verifying people's bank accounts. And that's that. That means more government expenditure, but it's worth it because it might prevent some fraud. But like, I want to just say on this, they're trying to like, again, because they have to world build and this whole fucking thing is a joke and made up. They're trying also, I think, like piggyback on some of the outrage that we feel toward people who are identity thieves and are, you know, like committing fraud. Those people, that sucks. It sucks that people are committing fraud and they're stealing stealing people's money. That's not the government. It's actually the opposite of true. So like they're trying to like piggyback on that anger. Can you believe they steal your check? They, whatever. But it's like, well, why would I be mad at the government about that? If anything, I would want the government, if I was mad at, at the department about that, I would want, then you need to spend more money to fix it or you need a higher, better people. Yeah.

0:38:48 Lydia: Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. I need higher, hire better people, create a more robust auditing system. Yeah.

0:39:07 Thomas: It doesn't mean, oh, cut your budget and fire everyone. So is that going to make it better? That's going to, make it harder to commit fraud. If you fired everybody and cut your budget. It's just fucking backwards. And I saw a post just today, actually, that really fits this, which is like, hey, if there's all this fraud, why hasn't a single person been arrested for it?

0:39:26 Lydia: Yeah.

0:39:26 Thomas: It's like, yeah, it's not real. Like if you if there were really this many people depositing checks designed for people 150 years. Yeah, you'd see a rat and, you know, they would publicize the fuck out of that. There'd be arrests. Mm hmm.

0:39:40 Lydia: That's what happened during COVID, right? Like when some folks in prison were receiving government funding through the loan, you know, paycheck protection programs and all those things because they received information fraudulently and then were receiving money for that. Yeah. I mean, you saw that everywhere when that was found out because it was found OUT. And so with this, this would be found OUT,

0:39:54 Thomas: Right, right, right. Right. Yeah.

0:40:05 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:40:05 Lydia: OK? OK, we're going to jump into some more money stuff, of course. But this is about credit cards. So the claim is that more federal credit cards than federal employees. I know. I'm curious how many credit cards these folks have.

0:40:15 Thomas: Sure. I mean, I just want to say, if you look at the number of credit cards just in the regular population, it's actually insane. Like the average person has like seven, I think like it's crazy. There's like gajillions of credit card. Three. It's a lot.

0:40:31 Clip: And just the one that just is in my head right now, which is a fairly mundane one but I think is very illustrative, is credit cards. There are, in the federal government, around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to

0:40:43 Thomas: This is such a fucking joke. Okay.

0:40:50 Clip: And so one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards? Can you tell us physically where they are? Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good compared—that's a whole other—

0:40:50 Thomas: Really? Doesn't it? Well, I actually want to ask already. I'm assuming you need to play more are these actually like credit card credit cards or are they because like I wouldn't think the government yeah it's like sure the government might need some payment cards you gotta like we saw what did we see when we did the nasa one the government had to order a book on amazon you know it's this annoying thing and there might be I guess I could conceive of them doing credit cards but I could also imagine it just being sort of debit charge card type thing because you need a number to make orders, but it's not like you need a credit limit and miles and blah, blah, do you want me to wait? Or OK, oh, we don't plan anything in advance, by the way. I just was sure.

0:41:12 Lydia: Mm hmm. Great question. Yeah. No, that's beautiful. OK. Yeah. OK. OK, so the credit cards, in quotes, are administered through the General Services Administration SmartPay program. And what these are is business lines. So there are several different types of business lines through the SmartPAY program. And they work with banks. They work with Citibank and U.S. Bank specifically these days. It used to be more, but as of recent years, it's just those two. Yeah. So the various business lines that they can have through the SmartPay program, which issues cards to use, are purchase, travel, fleet, and integrated, if there's something that needs to, you know, cross categories. They use these cards for supply orders, for meals during travel, for airfare, for, again, fleet acquisition. They use it for everything. And I downloaded their fiscal year 2025 data. It's been updated through December 2024. And it's a great workbook. Oh, my gosh. I was spending all this time in these Excel spreadsheets. Oh yeah, you should. It is really cool. Yes. The whole government. Yeah. So you can see by agency how many accounts they have. You can see how much they have spent. You So the government, yeah, the government through the SmartPay program, they offer tracking because, again, like this is the public sector. This is taxpayer money. So we have a right to see what this is. So there are 3 .8 million accounts via Citibank and 702 ,000 accounts via U .S. Bank in total because I've seen other news agencies. I know, I know. But I have seen other news agencies that say, like, we can't confirm this four point six million account number.

0:42:17 Thomas: This right when you start saying it's like, yeah, obviously this is how it would be. Cool. Oh, I want to look at it. Yeah. So is this for the like whole fucking government or is this four? Really? Oh, oh, cool. And this is with, you said this was with a couple of banks or are you looking at one that's like a single bank? Okay, so who's providing this report? I guess is my question. Is it the bank? Is it that the government does a report on it? Okay, yeah, yeah. Right. Why would the number of accounts fucking matter? It doesn't matter. Do you think, okay, here I'll give, I'll toss Doge one. If it's true that we negotiated some sort of idiotic contract where for every single like credit card account within this business relationship, within this banking relationship, if they're charging us some absorbent fees like per person or something, then sure, maybe the number of accounts could matter. But like I have to imagine that's not how you would structure that deal. I mean, you might have some sortof small like origination fee for printing fee or something like you're not going to structure the deal that way, right? Mm -hmm. Uh -huh. Oh, so nothing. Oh, okay. Secret Service. Department of Defense. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was going to say just Trump for his golfing and Secret Service, right? Right? For what, again, what time period are you talking? Okay, so so far. Okay, yeah? I mean, that's, yeah, so it's going to be a chunk of change for sure by the, to probably per year. But again, this is people traveling because they're in the Department of Defense. The fact that there's more accounts than there are people is nothing. That doesn't do anything. Yeah, it's like you, I'm sure that it's a responsibility of, at some level of bureaucracy to audit this, you know, like I'm certain that it is. I'm not sure whether it's someone responsible for, some department responsible for all of it or on a per department basis, they have to audit or who knows what level, you know, layer of granularity there is someone's responsibility to audit it. There's also what you're looking at, a public report of all the spending, you know, like, so they have their eyes on this and it's just a way for the government to spend money that it needs to. It's not, there's no additional cost. It's, if anything, it sounds like a, an efficient cost saving method rather than like, uh, I could imagine some other methods. Yeah. So dumb credit cards that's what they think they think it's like credit card like they think there must be all there's probably like stupid fucking children god yeah doy

0:44:14 Lydia: No. Yeah. Yeah, I really don't think so. And they have like their overarching contract. And then I think they have other negotiated things specific to agencies. And with Citibank, there's three point eight million accounts associated with them, 702 ,000 accounts via U .S. banks. So for a total of 4 .538 accounts, million accounts, those accounts handled 20 .4 million transactions valued at $9 .2 billion. Yeah. And purchase lines were the vast majority here. So $6 .5 billion of that was for, you know, supply orders and things of that nature. But that was generated from only 702 thousand accounts. Accounts. The most accounts are tied to travel IBA, individually billed account versus centrally billed accounts. So it's more of like a reimbursement fund related to travel. There are 3 .1 million travel IBA accounts with approximately seven and a half million transactions valued at $1 .8 billion. I'll give you one guess to figure out who is primarily responsible for that. Which agency. No, Department of Defense. Yeah. Yeah, so I said 3.1 million accounts that are travel IBA accounts. The Department of defense has two and a quarter million accounts. That's nearly all of them. And they conducted 4.6 million transactions valued at $1.12 billion. Again, drops in a bucket. It. So this is fiscal year 25. So this is, yeah, through December 2024. Yeah, exactly.

0:46:17 Lydia: It doesn't mean anything. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah. This is money that they're spending regardless. Right. So what is the waste here? Just the potential for a fee, I guess. Yeah. And again, they're not credit cards there. Yeah. Like 24 percent APR. Yeah, it's really dumb. It's really, really dumb from some these supposedly really smart people. And so, again, I mentioned this is something that's used government wide. So 406 agencies served by Citibank, many with multiple business lines, 205 served by U.S. Bank, many with multiple lines. So, yeah, yeah. Right.

0:47:38 Thomas: Makes sense obviously you do things this way otherwise you have to have what every government employee carries around like cash or like a checkbook that's like they have to carry around like no they actually have to print the money that they need like they all carry a printing press like what is the alternative so dumb

0:47:45 Lydia: Yeah. You have to go to petty cash to get. Yeah I know I know yeah

0:47:57 Thomas: I can't handle fucking grown-ass adults acting this dumb either being or acting this dumb there's no either way fuck you you shouldn't be here god's pathetic grow up you fucking children

0:48:13 Clip: But so far, the teams have worked together, and they've reduced it from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.

0:48:19 Thomas: Oh how much savings is that does he

0:48:20 Clip: So we're still— But clearly, there should not be, you know—there shouldn't be any more credit

0:48:29 Thomas: Ask what okay what if you had different cards for different kinds of expenditures.

0:48:29 Clip: Joe, middle-level employees.

0:48:35 Thomas: So what if you have, and you already have two banks, so you know you can't have one card for two banks. Like you'd have to have at least two different kinds. Yeah. Yeah, for record keeping, for organization, for auditing, it would make sense that like, hey, if you're booking air travel, you got to use this card. If you're book in something else, you gotta use it. If you book in just supplies or basic, like that would make it way easier to, because we're talking on big scales here, like that would make it way easier on a large scale to keep track of stuff so why obviously should there only be one card credit card per like why does can someone just ask why and also brett bear can you ask okay why and also okay how much money three, you've now cut three hundred thousand quote-unquote credit cards yeah I'm sure yeah

0:48:43 Lydia: And I mentioned that broad categories right there's the purchase line there's travel line there's fleet line there integrated line yeah yeah how much money did that save right and it was probably cards that weren't even being used it was cards with expired fired you know dates on them like yeah yeah additionally

0:49:29 Thomas: It's probably like fucking cells on a spreadsheet that they're like, why don't you hit delete on those? Cause they don't matter anymore. And they're great. We'll represent that as an amazing savings. Oh my God. What the fuck is this? My God. This is, you guys explain more. What is, this is real? A one, first off, why $1? Like, is there some like legitimate expense that caught, like, is that in their mind, again, this has all their dumb fucking world building in their minds. Is that That like, okay, that's a reasonable government cost. They should be buying a pack of gum from time to time. What is the transit?

0:49:39 Lydia: Um with removing 300,000 quote credit cards whoop-de-doo there's also a one dollar cap right now uh there's a credit card freeze for the federal government so anyone who needs to purchase things they're having to like figure out ways to purchase stuff without compromising their own personal credit card details and then ask for reimbursement from their agencies. Yeah, it's real. It was an executive order from Trump.

0:50:27 Thomas: What does $1 even do? What does that do? Just say we're freezing spending with these accounts. Just say that. All this dumb fucking shit to try to look serious. It's not serious. I mean, this is crazy because that would be really disruptive. And I have to imagine, again, you said most of them are in the Department of Defense. So didn't somebody complain? Like, what's going on with this? Are they just not doing it? Oh, my God. Out of pocket yeah that sounds like efficiency if now they're having to figure out okay I gotta take the time to fill out my fucking as a worker as a federal worker I gotta fill out a form to get reimbursed and then someone has to process that fucking form to get reimbursed wow it's the model of efficiency I'm sorry I'm losing my fucking mind I hate these people so much god it's so fucking dumb you're all so dumb idiots they're so smug look at them sitting in their fucking suits except like one guy's got the jeans because you know he's got to be like the the tech bro guy you see a tech ceo look the jeans in the in the suit jacket but like they're just I can't take it it's the worst all

0:50:37 Lydia: It's a credit card freeze for 30 days. All credit cards held by agency employees and then the only exception would be any cards that are used for disaster relief or natural disaster response benefits or operations. Yeah oh I'm sure people are complaining. Yeah I I don't know. I think there have been some examples where people used the travel line for travel to but hadn't lined up travel to come back. And so now they're having to use like to figure out personally, yeah, how they can come back from their work trip.

0:51:28 Lydia: Mm hmm. I know. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's pretty bad. All right well we're gonna take a pause on that and

0:52:00 Thomas: Right well I gotta go lay down and calm down a little bit and we we've we're gonna we're going to pause and uh lydia's let's see about 10 through her notes so we'll see how many parts this is but uh we're at least gonna let suffice for part one here And I'm going to calm down so that I have more bandwidth to get angry in part two.

0:52:18 Thomas: So next time on Where There's Woke, more anger. I'm an oil man. Name's Tyler. I'm cutting that. I don't want to make the same joke as Brett Baer.

0:52:18 Lydia: You're gonna need it