Transcription
Donald Trump is back at the White House this week, meeting with President Joe Biden, promising a smooth transition—unlike what he did. By the way, Trump has also been busy with lots of announcements about his cabinet advisers. They started off normal: Susie Wilds, Marco Rubio, and now we're at Matt Gates's pick for Attorney General, um, and Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
We'll get to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or as I'm calling it, the Department of Grotesque Egomaniacs, or the Department of Grandstanding Edgelords. This just gets weirder and weirder.
What are your initial thoughts on this? Cadre's disqualified candidates, as one writer called them, are also in the mix: Russia's best friend Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and Kristi Noem, "killer of dogs," for Homeland Security Secretary. Chuck Todd posted that these confirmation hearings may just save cable TV for the short term. He got sort of dinged for it, but I would have to agree.
First, before they make it through, what are your overall thoughts? It just degenerated; it was like okay and then no, like that kind of thing. What do you think?
Well, he's made some additional announcements. He's announced that Sue Sylvester, Jane Lynch's character from Glee, is going to lead the Department of Performing Arts, and also Lea Michele will lead the Department of Pun, Punctuation, and Spelling.
Um, also, I don't know, the most recent one: Gob Bluth, from Arrested Development, Will Arnett's character, is going to be the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Oh my God! And also Baron Harkonnen from Dune will head spice production on the planet Arrakis.
Nice, nice! Look, I now believe in the appointment, or the floating of the idea of Matt Gates for Attorney General. Within about an hour, Lisa Murkowski, or Senator Murkowski, who I love, basically said this: Matt Gates is an unserious candidate, and I look forward to vetting a serious candidate. I think this was them saying you're a loyalist, give him something, and what they've done is run cover for just a crappy pick as opposed to a crazy, stupid pick—and that's what Matt Gates is to be AG; that just makes no sense.
Then, if you really want to talk about a loyalty test for Senate Republicans in newly elected leader Senator John Thune, they all were pushing for Rick—whatever the Florida idiot—Rick Scott. He was the one that Matt Gates was pushing. Absolutely, yeah, I don't think Rick Scott is an idiot; I don't love his politics, but oh my God, he made a mess of the Senate committee he was running. 100%. But he's at least competent; he's elected.
I don't know; look, perfect is not on the menu here. I mean, when Senator Rubio looks like a thoughtful pick with gravitas for Secretary of State, everyone is just hoping for someone who has some administrative and leadership experience. But my favorite is that there are not one but two heads of a committee on efficiency. I mean, that kind of tells you, I know, I know this makes no sense.
And I just want to—it's like the Grace Commission, right? Do you remember the Grace Commission under Reagan? He was going to drain the swamp, and he created that Commission of leaders to cut everything—the private sector survey on cost control to reduce government waste. Clinton had it; he launched the National Performance Review. Yeah, W had the President's Management Agenda; Obama had efficiency reforms.
Trump created the Reform Task Force to eliminate inefficiencies. He attempted unsuccessfully to shut down 19 agencies. This is a popular political move; 23% of Americans think the federal government is wasteful and bureaucratic. But let's just look at some data here: Trump is by no means our most efficient president. Federal employment under Trump rose 3.4% during his first term compared to an increase of 1.3% in Obama's second term.
It did increase; federal employment did increase by over 6% under Biden. Despite all the rhetoric, the US government spends less as a share of GDP than its peers. US government spending is projected to be about 38% of GDP—that's less than Japan, which is 42%, the UK at 43%, and Germany at 48%. The US public sector, which they claim they oversee for their citizens—
But go ahead, true. The US public sector employs 14% of workers, which is more than Germany's 13.3% and Mexico's 12%, which denotes, based on what you said, is probably inefficient but less than France's 21% and the UK's 23%.
Now, let's just specifically go to the pick of Elon or First Lady Melania to head an efficiency. Let's just talk about efficiency at Tesla: the automobile industry, revenue per employee is $1.07 million per employee; BMW, GM $1.21 million per employee; Ford $980,000 per employee; Mercedes-Benz $950,000; Toyota $760,000.
Pulling up the rear as the least efficient of these companies is Tesla, which registers revenue of $740,000 per employee. So the least efficient car company, revenue per employee, is Tesla.
So anyways, I find the whole thing will be very interesting. They claim they're going to cut this thing by, I don’t know, $2 trillion, which means they'd have to—like he didn't mention it in the press release—no numbers, like he went on and on on Twitter. But of course, like, that's just nonsense; it's just nonsense.
Anyways, I’m finding this whole thing—if you’re going to be dumb, don’t be dumb; be outrageous. No one’s really taking this seriously because it just seems so outrageous. All even the Congress members were like, "Yeah, he can ask; we're not doing it."
You know, even the Republican ones—the Gates nomination is interesting only because, um, what's interesting about this is, of course, his behavior with young women, women underage. He resigned from Congress on Wednesday, days before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing a highly critical report of their investigation into him.
What is your take? I agree with you that I think there's a lot of Republicans. First off, the thing I don’t think the market or people have absorbed is: as of today, Donald Trump is a lame duck president. Yeah, and he's not going to have nearly the power to intimidate Republicans.
I’ve got to think it’s going to be very tempting for Republicans on a pick like this to go, "No," to basically pull a Murkowski and say, "This is not a serious candidate." I’ve got to think the Trump Administration realized he probably wasn’t going to be able to get Gates through, but they did it anyway.
What do you think they’re trying to do here? What’s their endgame? I don't know, because they're frittering away an amazing victory, right? You know, it seems like now they're like, "Oh God, the idiots are back."
Like, I don’t know; he has such an opportunity to not fritter away what was a spectacular return to power, and now we’re talking about Matt Gates and jailbait; that’s what we’re talking about now, as opposed to what he could be doing.
And then Elon doing these stupid—you know, he’s calling it the “Manhattan Project of our time.” Yeah, it’s going to blow up in their face. That’s why it’s the Manhattan Project of their time; it’s such a waste of opportunity here, and largely because I think he is of the mind: “I’ll say something crazy, and then I’ll say the next thing that’s crazy, and the next thing that’s crazy.”
But this isn’t effective in any way. If he really—you know, maybe over to the right they’re going to be deporting people and hoping that people don’t notice that if it’s particularly ugly looking.
Honestly, I think there’s no planning here, and I think they’re just letting people in. Interestingly, you know, I think the Doge thing is just nonsense; it’s just ridiculous. You can’t really—there’s not going to be a government department, which is kind of ridiculous, and it needs to be created by Congress’s authorization.
They’re not wasting their time on that, and they’re not going to cut what they want, right?
One of the interesting things is that he’s been down in Mar-a-Lago, as I said, was an issue—everyone's now reporting how irritating he is. NBC News quoted a source saying, "Elon is behaving as if he’s co-president; people are irritated by him; the guests won’t leave."
I think this is just—they’re frittering away what was a clear and definitive win, and I’m not sure why they’re doing it. Suicidal nature? I don’t know; I have no idea.
I do think that the appointment of the Bass Pro Shop swimmer guy as head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service makes sense. I don’t just—oh, and Roman Roy will be the new Deputy Administrator of NASA.
Yeah, yeah, I just don’t get it. Hannibal Lecter is the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. Oh God, I don’t get it! By the way, what a laughable, ridiculous personality she is; they’re all Fox News people.
You know who I like though? Who’s now the new Senate Majority Leader is Thune. Yeah, I like him; I think he’s reasonable, and not only that, he pushes back on Trump. Not only that, he’s very handsome!
Cara, did you up for drinks with him? He’s very handsome. I don’t know if he’d be up for impromptu drinks with me and George H. I’ll try, but I’m not—I’m going to give you a word of the day: it’s called kakistocracy—government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state, or a society governed by the least suitable or competent citizens.
The modern regime wants a plutocracy and a kakistocracy. That is the word of the day here, okay? No joke, I heard that word an hour ago. Scott Burns, who is the showrunner and the writer on this show I’m working on, said—was talking about rebranding the Democratic Party, and someone suggested kakistocracy.
He’s like, “Are you crazy? No one can spell that word!” Anyway, no joke, I feel like I should throw salt over my shoulder or whatever it is you do when you’re, yeah, when you're superstitious, but I heard that word, no joke, 90 minutes ago.
It’s a word of the week. Well, we’ll see what happens.