Lydia watched the DOGE interview on Fox News so the rest of us didn't have to. In it, Musk and his posse make some "shocking" claims about the fraud and waste they're identifying in the federal government. Lydia gives us a deep dive debunk to call out the falsehoods, the misleading statements, and the straight propaganda this "charm offensive" spewed on national television. Part 1 of 2. Revolving Door Project's research on DOGE personnel If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke! This content is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
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?
I'm back.
I took one episode off.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I wasn't here for 79. It's more like I took an episode on.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
You had some things to say.
Yeah. I mean, I just can't have you looking over my shoulder.
But I'm back, baby.
Hello, everybody.
Strong entrance.
I like it.
I like this energy.
Yeah. What are we going to be talking about today?
Oh my God.
Well, I think I'm coming with strong energy.
Some people might call it like big balls energy because...
I'm so glad I know that's a reference to something and not you losing your mind because...
Oh yeah, I know.
It's usually like every recording.
Not language you would ever use.
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 Bret Baier on special court late last week.
So Bret Baier's doxing them then, shouldn't he be killed or something according to Elon?
Well, it's interesting the faces that have shown up, but I'm not going to spoil anything else because we're going to have someone else explain how this interview was put together.
Bringing on a guest?
Okay, dial them in.
Come on in my closet.
All right.
Well, there's so much to look forward to after the break.
Patreon.com slash weatherswoke.
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 and support the show.
Thanks so much to our supporters on patreon.com slash 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?
Where's our big illustrious guest?
Well, before the guest joins us, just want to explain a little bit about.
That's 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.
That's what you do with your time?
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.
Sure. 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.
But it caught my eye.
False flag.
Oh, okay.
The pride flag.
Yeah, the pride flag.
But what's the second part of the meaning?
It's a double meaning.
Yes. 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 undertook to...
No. Potentially.
I don't know.
I haven't read the book.
I don't know.
That's fair.
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. 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 introduce us to this interview, I'm actually going to invite Megan Kelly!
Come on in!
What is with Megan fucking Kelly?
She was on the New York Times interview podcast the other day.
Yeah, I was watching that, actually.
I actually listened to it and it's like, cool, this is pointless.
Why were we here?
Yeah. 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, we can hear from the other side.
Just have my kids make shit up for you.
It doesn't...
It's not useful.
Anyway, okay.
Opened the show talking about Elon, on with Bret Baier 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?
Peace, guys.
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 what Brett Baier was telling him.
So you co-founded Airbnb.
You're the CFO of Morgan Stanley.
These, the credentials of these people.
We talked about this a little on the morning meeting this morning that it was the illumination 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 CIOs, chief information officer.
There are 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 American federal workers can retire in a given month.
Because that's all the system can handle because it has to take a manila envelope going down a mine.
A mine.
Okay, sure.
That's how many envelopes can go down in a month.
That's insane.
Okay, so pin in all of that.
We're going to talk about all of those things.
Pin in all of those definitely accurate, very And then I do 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.
We're not seeing them right now, but there's got to be women.
Just like Elon Musk 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 them.
Yeah, exactly.
But she goes on later to describe In my head, like the way they were being described by the media, it was like, I pictured like these Dope-smoking, hacky-sack-kicking, beanie-wearing, foggy, hot, bloodshot.
Put them in tie-dye shirts.
What are you guys talking about?
You idiots.
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, playing hacky-sack with tie-dye shirts?
You think that's who went to work for Elon fucking Musk, the richest man in the world?
Yeah, who said, I hope you like working a million hours a week because you're not going to get time off ever.
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.
Yeah. And then it turns out, no, that is who it is.
So it's like, that's called being in touch.
These guys.
Were they wearing Crocs or Birkenstocks in your mind?
What are you?
Birkenstocks?
I'm down below the ankle in picturing that.
But I definitely, I could smell the aroma.
I had a perceived smell.
They're not that at all.
These are actually really accomplished, badass, professional guys who are super articulate on top of their game.
I'm sure they sent their best for the Brett Baer interview.
Yeah, there you go.
They're the guys who better match my description.
No, no, actually no.
Chief among them was Elon with some very...
Yeah, so I think this I just really want to make it Kelly to say it.
I love how she keeps accidentally making the point.
Yeah, there's no women.
Weird. I'm sure they're somewhere and also I'm sure they just sent mouthpieces for an interview.
Yeah, they probably sent these people for a reason.
By the way, the interview that's taken for even she acknowledges like why didn't they do this sooner?
Yeah, like 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 Poll numbers are not good for Doge, right?
Because now they're having to go on this, like, public relations offensive.
You've hired, like, actors to do it?
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 Gleason, who is 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.
I wouldn't use that as an insult on my worst enemy.
You're Elon Musk's right-hand man.
Yeah, I know.
The day-to-day leader of Doge, reportedly the main person in charge, except for the appointed head, Amy Gleason, who's never there and never signs in.
Yeah, what's she doing?
What's she up to?
Nobody knows.
She's just, yeah, her LinkedIn is updated.
That's all.
She's just a DEI hire.
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 Boring Company in 2018.
How's that one doing?
Yeah, not great.
But so funny, though, like the name is so funny.
Yeah. I don't.
Is that how you would describe it?
Like, I don't know.
Always in moderation with chemo.
It's more like it's a last ditch effort.
It's always horrible.
Try to save your life, yeah.
And it's a last ditch effort that might work.
And might not.
Or might kill you.
But it's not about like, yeah, you need a microdose chemo.
Yeah, exactly.
Just a teaspoon full of chemo.
There is some thought that he might be the person that's behind the fork in the road emails because he Wow.
And there are 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 the vehicle.
That caused the fuel to unbounded.
Oh my god.
Yeah, it's not a place I want cost-cutting.
Yeah, I know, exactly.
Rocketry? Like, I just don't get it right.
Yeah. He helped run the super PAC that Musk started for Trump, AmericaPAC.
Hey, Costco that!
Do that!
Wired reported in 2024 that AmericaPAC 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! A professional asshole.
Yeah, he has also served on the Board of Advisors of the Atlas Society, so dedicated to Ayn Rand's philosophy.
Oh, God.
Yeah, he's appeared at Ayn Rand conferences.
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.
Yeah, apparently he can quote Atlas Shrugged off the top of his head.
Quote, regular atlases.
Africa. That's all I got.
That's the only thing I know from atlases.
Yeah. Now, Steve Davis's right hand man, because every right hand man 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 DOJ 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.
Thank you so much.
Yeah. Yep.
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.
What's that again?
So the Revolving Door Project is an online database essentially like evaluating executive branch appointees and they have 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...
They're hiding behind their Birkenstocks and tie-dye shirts.
Tie-dye shirts, yeah, and hacky-sacks.
What year is it?
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.
Oh, Revolving Door.
Yes. So like, as in, because lobbyists and stuff.
Yeah, that's right.
I remember now.
And a few other folks 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.
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 the board of Airbnb, but just as an advisory role.
Aram Moghadasi 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 Haasen.
He is A former oil executive.
An oil executive named Tyler?
Yeah. What an age we live in.
Yeah, exactly.
I know.
Next it's going to be Cody and Chad.
You can't have Daniel Day-Lewis play Tyler.
I'm an oil man.
Name's Tyler.
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 and budget.
So I don't know if he has officially two hats working for DOJ 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.
What? Yeah.
Was an honor for the Doge team to work with you.
Great job.
OK, OK.
I have a feeling that if it were that easy.
Yeah. Have you ever thought of just like turning the pumps to double mode?
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.
Oh, so they could like go visit and claim.
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.
Boy, they only work when you're here.
This is amazing.
I guess he has to live there now.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. He has some super power.
These fucking bullshit, phony pieces of crap.
It's so pathetic.
It's North Korea!
It's insane.
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 these.
Yeah, we're still in the preambling.
I know.
I know.
There's 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, the mainstream media fails miserably at it.
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.
I just 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 be 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 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 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.
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.
And again, notably, no big balls here.
No racist L.S. up there either.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about seeing the size of his balls.
I was hoping, like, he should wear...
I should have done an interview and he wears, like, tight pants that, like, stuff's like a grapefruit in there.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. This first claim is titled a nearly one billion dollar survey for no reason.
Oh, sure.
So we'll listen to Elon talk about it.
We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more.
Casually. Casually.
You know, for example, like 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 dollars for that.
For just the survey?
A billion dollars for a simple online survey.
Do you like the National Park?
And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey.
So the survey would just go into nothing.
I bet that's all true.
So what's your initial feeling there?
There's nothing to even go on because it's just dumb.
There's no way that's true.
So when the New York Times was fact-checking this, they looked at, you know, other posts from DOJ, and one of the posts that DOJ 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 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 million.
There's no contract for $830 million, like they're saying, or a billion dollars.
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.
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.
Do we know the details of those contracts?
No. But we can assume that's not for one survey.
Yeah. I imagine, is it like an ongoing maybe relationship?
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. I imagine with the work involved, you don't want to just sign on for like a very temporary thing.
Yeah. And try to set up for it.
And then this.
Yeah. OK.
So it's likely for all we know, it could be 10 fucking years.
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.
One hundred and ninety nine of those are listed as zero dollars in savings.
Cool. Yeah.
So how this one billion dollar talking point continues to gain steam.
That 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 is doing.
But even the Doge website isn't listing?
No. The Doge website is very problematic.
And like I said, we'll get to that.
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. 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 $23.5 million and the $10.75 million are actually mislabeled on the DOJ website, and they're actually USAID contracts.
Not Department of Interior.
But he routinely just finds billion dollar contracts for nothing.
Casually. Just routinely.
All right.
Next up, we are going to go to one that I spent quite a bit of time on.
Fifteen million fraudulent Social Security numbers.
There aren't even that many numbers.
Nailed it.
You're done.
Yeah. The amount of issues that were 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.
Yes. Correct.
15 million.
Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem.
Again, pre-existing problems since 2008 at least.
Oh, so it's already been identified.
Yeah. From an IG report.
And what are you doing?
So, there are 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 We're floating around that can be used only for bad intentions.
There'd be no way to use those for good intentions.
And so what one of the things the DOJ team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
OK, so they cite this 2008 OIG report and really like what is captured in that report is focusing on the Social Security Administration's death master file.
It's hardcore.
I know.
Death master file.
Now, there are more than 3 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, they looked at evaluating any errors that were erroneous Oh, added?
So that would mean they're not dead?
That'd be the opposite of savings, right?
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 master file.
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.
There is such a thing as like faking your death.
Yeah. And so there were instances in which or just like mistaken identity or or typos.
I mean, like like there are 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 be there.
That's a very, very, very small number.
Well, and you're saying added.
So, again, that's people that, if anything, they should be getting checks and aren't.
Right. Right.
Exactly. And then they would get the back pay.
Yeah. So we're talking about savings.
You have to go the other way, which is all kinds of people who should be on there, but but are not on there.
So now here's the opposite way from the Social Security Administration.
Is this still in 2008?
This is now.
2023. I 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% of the benefits that are paid out from Social Security.
You know, the 90,000 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.
Really? Yeah.
A lot.
And what period of time, per year, per what?
Yeah, I think it's for the year.
Okay. Now does that, I just want to make sure, does that mean unique individuals or is that once a month or what?
I think those are unique.
I think the way that this is being provided is unique.
Like over the course of that year, it's that many unique individuals getting a payment, at least one payment.
Yes. Is that what it means?
Okay. That is what I understand 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, etc, etc.
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.
Right. 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, you 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 We're good to
go. 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.
Yeah. So the Social Security Administration opted to not do that.
That's what happens in government.
So exactly.
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!
Yeah. Ten million dollars to fix something that wasn't even a problem.
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.
Boy, that ought to save tens of dollars.
But usually what we're seeing are overpayments to living people when we're talking about, you know, the potential...
Spare a thought for that 116-year-old.
I know, I know.
I guess there aren't very many of us.
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 shouldn't have been.
Wait, what's the total that they're paying out year to year?
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.
Wow, so it's about a trillion point one a year that they're paying, sort of, or trillion point two?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ish.
Yeah, okay.
It's a lot of money, but again, This is for the whole country.
300 plus million people.
Yeah, like potentially.
We have a lot of money, which is just 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.
It doesn't make a difference.
I mean, you can make arguments for like, would there be efficiency in 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, cause the one, 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 very wealthy country.
There's nothing inherently scary about it.
Is there plenty of ways?
Probably. Is this fucking team going to find it?
Yeah. I have one more little bit on social security that happened a little bit later in the interview, if you don't mind playing.
Yeah. At social security, one of the first things we learned is that Sorry, we just had one of the guys in the front that looked, I thought it was Rick Scott for a second, but like this, you know, bald white guy doing a hard, like, 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 so with it." Every day of people trying to change direct deposit information.
So when you wanna change your bank account, you can call social security.
We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
40%?
Why is that their fault?
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% of Social Security direct deposit fraud 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 get are from fraud.
That's right.
Almost half.
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 because of all the fraud loopholes in the social security system.
Am I interpreting that correctly?
That they are saying...
Well, the only reason I want to play it is because, like, for one, just the clip we played wouldn't be their fault.
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 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, right?
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 where, like, yeah, 40% 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.
yeah but it also I think is inaccurate the way that they're stating this separate issue I'm saying I wasn't sure what context you were 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?
people who try to do identity theft and those kind of crimes they have to cast a wide net and there's going to be a lot of them because they automate a lot of it and they They cast a wide 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.
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% of calls to SSA are direct deposit fraud.
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.
One, as Elon Musk says, it's all day, every day that they're facing this fraud.
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.
People change their bank accounts sometimes.
Yeah. 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 like, can you believe this?
I know.
But most of it is just saying things like, yeah, all day, not even during business hours.
It's like, okay, so people, that's customer service, people need to change their bank account.
That's normal.
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.
So it sounds like something that's going to cost the government a little more money.
Yeah. A little more money to run it better, which is fine.
You know what I mean?
It just gives lie to the entire premise.
This isn't something where it's just always fraud and abuse, fraud and abuse, waste.
It's like, well, actually, if you want this to be better, maybe you need to spend a 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.
Yeah. But I want to just say on this, they're trying to, again, because they have to world build and this whole fucking thing is a joke and made up, they're trying to also, I think, 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 people's money.
That's not the government.
It's actually the opposite.
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 the government about that I would want then you need to spend more money to fix it right right exactly I hire better higher higher better people create.
It doesn't mean oh your budget and fire everyone so there's not gonna make it better That's gonna make it harder to commit fraud if you fired everybody and cut your budget It's just fucking backwards, and I saw a post the other day 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?
It's like, yeah, it's not real.
If there were really this many people depositing checks designed for people 150 years old, yeah, You'd see arrests.
And you know they would publicize the fuck out of that.
There'd be arrests.
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.
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.
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.
I know.
I'm curious how many credit cards these folks have.
The average person has like seven, I think.
Like, it's crazy.
There's like gajillions of credit cards.
Three. It's a lot.
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 2.4 million employees.
This doesn't make sense.
Right. And so one of the things all the teams have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, Do you need all of these credit cards?
Are they being used?
Can you tell us physically where they are?
I hope they're getting frequent flyers.
Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good.
That's a whole other negotiation.
Well, I actually want to ask already.
I'm assuming we need to play more.
Are these actually like credit card credit cards?
Or are they cards?
Because like I wouldn't think the government Great question.
Sure, the government might need some payment cards.
What did we see when we did the NASA one?
The government had to order a book on Amazon.
It's like this annoying thing.
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, blah.
You want me to wait?
No, that's beautiful.
Okay. Oh, we don't plan anything in advance, by the way.
Yeah, okay.
So the credit cards, in quotes, are administered through the General Services Administration's SmartPay program.
And what these are, are That's a great question.
Yeah. So the various business lines that they can have through the SmartPay program, which issues cards to use, are purchase, travel, fleet, travel.
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.
Like, they use it for everything.
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 like in these Excel spreadsheets.
Oh yeah, you should.
It's really cool.
Is this for the like whole fucking government or is this for really?
The whole government.
Yeah. So you can see by agency how many accounts they have.
Oh, cool.
You can see how much they've spent.
You can see how many transactions.
You said this was with a couple banks or are you looking at one that's like a single bank?
Who's providing this report, I guess, is my question.
Is it the bank?
Is it the government?
The government.
The government does a report on it?
Yeah, the government.
Through the SmartPay program, they offer tracking because, again, 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...
Why would the number of accounts fucking matter?
I know, I know.
It doesn't matter.
I have seen other news agencies that say, like, we can't confirm this 4.6 million account number.
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 absorbitant 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 sort of small like origination fee for printing fee or something, You're not going to structure the deal that way, right?
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 3.8 million accounts associated with them, 702,000 accounts via U.S. Bank.
So for a total of 4.538 Yeah, I think so.
million dollars of that was for, you know, supply orders and things of that nature.
But that was generated from only 702,000 accounts.
The Most accounts are tied to travel IBA, individually billed account, versus centrally billed account.
So it's more of like a reimbursement fund related to travel.
There are 3.1 million travel IBA accounts with approximately 7.5 million transactions valued at $1.8 billion.
I'll give you one guess to figure out who is primarily responsible for that.
Which agency?
Secret Service.
No, Department of Defense.
Department of Defense.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I was going to say, just Trump for his golfing and Secret Service.
Yeah, so I said 3.1 million accounts that are travel IBA accounts.
The Department of Defense has two and a quarter million accounts.
Right. That's nearly all of them.
And they conducted 4.6 million transactions valued at $1.12 billion.
Again, drops in a bucket.
What time period are you talking?
So this is fiscal year 25. So this is...
So, so far.
Yeah, through December 2024.
Yeah, so it's going to be a chunk of change for sure, probably per year.
Yeah. 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.
Exactly. It doesn't mean anything.
Yeah. It's like, I'm sure that it's a responsibility of some level of Bureaucracy to audit this, you know, like I'm 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.
Oh, yeah, 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.
Yep. It's not, there's no additional cost.
It's, if anything, it sounds like a, an efficient cost saving method rather than like, I could imagine some other methods.
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.
They think it's like credit cards.
Like they think there must be all this probably like...
Like 24% APR.
Yeah. It's stupid.
It's really dumb.
It's really, really dumb from 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... Doy, it makes sense.
Obviously, Right.
Yeah. I know.
I know I can't handle fucking grown ass adults acting this dumb, either being or acting this dumb.
There's no either way.
Yeah. Fuck you.
You shouldn't be here.
God's pathetic.
Grow up, you fucking children!
Exactly, but so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.
Oh, how much savings is that, does he ask?
We're taking it easy.
Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people.
Joe, middle-level employees...
Okay, what if you had different cards for different kinds of expenditures?
Right. So what if you have, and you already have two banks, so you know you can't have one card for two banks.
Right. Like you'd have to have at least two.
And I mentioned that broad categories, right?
There's the purchase line, there's the travel line, there's the fleet line, there's the integrated line.
Yeah, for recordkeeping, 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 booking something else, you got to use it.
If you're booking just supplies or basics, 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, why obviously, why obviously should there only be one card, credit card per, like Why?
Yeah. Can someone just ask why?
And also, Brett Barrett, can you ask, okay, why?
And also, okay, how much money?
How much money did that save?
You now cut 300,000 quote-unquote credit cards.
And it was probably cards that weren't even being used.
It was probably cards with expired, you know, dates on them.
Yeah, it's probably like fucking Sells on a spreadsheet that they're like, why don't you hit delete on those because they don't matter anymore and they're like, great, we'll represent that as an amazing savings.
Additionally, with removing 300,000 quote credit cards, whoop-de-doo, there's also a $1 cap right now.
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 agency.
You guys explain more.
This is real?
Yeah, it's real.
It was an executive order from Trump.
First off, why $1?
Like is there some like legitimate expense that caught, like is that, in their mind, again, this is all their dumb fucking world building.
In their mind is that like, okay, that's a reasonable government cost.
They should be buying a pack of gum from time to time.
What does one dollar 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.
Yeah, 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.
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?
Oh, I'm sure people are complaining.
Are they just not doing it?
Yeah, I don't know.
I think there have been some examples where people used the travel line for travel 2, but hadn't lined up travel to come back.
And so now they're having to use, like, to figure out personally how they can come back from their work trip.
That sounds like efficiency.
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.
I know.
God, it's so fucking dumb!
You're all so dumb!
Idiots! Yeah.
Yeah, I know, it's pretty bad.
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 tech bro guy.
The tech CEO look.
The jeans and the suit jacket.
But like, they're just, I can't take it.
It's the worst.
All right.
Well, we're going to take a pause on that.
All right.
Well, I got to go lay down and calm down a little bit.
And we're going to pause.
And Lydia is, let's see, about 10% through her notes.
So we'll see how many parts this is.
But we're at least going to let it suffice for part one here.
And I'm going to calm down so that I have more bandwidth to get angry in part two.
