Deep State Rebels v. Trump (with Michael Lewis)

0:00Hey everybody, welcome to Ponce of America. I'm John Loveett. I just wrapped a great conversation with Michael Lewis. He is an author of the new book, Blockers Rebels in the Deep State, is a conversation not just about what happened when Doge tried to run roughshod over the government, but also the people inside who fought back. And there are a lot of fascinating stories and lessons and ways that we should be thinking about how not only to repair the damage, but build something better going forward and just love getting to talk to Michael Lewis. And I think go like it to it's good to see you John. Good to see you. The book is enraging. Is it? Yeah, it was fun to write. It wasn't making me angry as I wrote it. Well, that's that seems sort of your quality. So I want to start with Colin O'Brien. He's the head of security for what was then known

1:05as the US Institute of Peace. What happened when Doge tried to gain entry to that building? In a word, he watched and he's he's had a security and he's more interesting character than that. He's like he presents as like an NFL lineman just to look at him, but he's like a college professor in his head. He watched Doge basically rearrange all the guns on their side. So that he thought first, he thought the Institute of Peace. It's not really part of the executive branch. It's a it's a Congressional created organization and it has got funding from the US government, but it owns its own building. It's a nonprofit. They didn't think of themselves as actually answering to the White House in any way. So it's weird when Doge shows up and says we're taking this. It does a very small. I think people like, oh, it's the Institute of Peace. They associated with USAID. USAID is vast compared to what the Institute of Peace is a couple hundred people. Yeah, it's a $70 million budget or something. Some of it privately raised and and Colin assumed, well, he has a private security firm that works for him. If the if the federal government tries to invade

2:08his building, he can call the DC police before he knows it. He's actually the most successful and repelling Doge because he lasted a few days. But before he knows it, the private security firm has been blackmailed by the Trump administration and turned so they're working for the Trump administration. The DC police sign on whatever they did. They did with the DC police. It's unclear. But I loved it as it's kind of opening of the book because he was physically trying to block them from getting into the building. And the end, like they get the building. I mean, in the end, it's now not the US Institute of Peace anymore. It's the Donald Trump Institute of Peace. So I feel like it's such a, I mean, obviously, is why you start the book with it. You're very good at this. But it's a signal example, right? Because he's on solid legal ground, right? These people don't have any right. They're just dough. You're private. It's like they're coming to your house to take your house. Right. They're just people off the street. They're very aggressive. They act like they own the

3:08place, right? And he says, no, you can't come in. They're 26 years old. Right. They're these kids. Right. No, you can't come in. Then they have a, they bring an FBI guy with them. And that person isn't really there other than to facilitate. He says, no, you can't come in. The private security firm, the reason Trump is able to, the administration is able to get this firm to be part of their efforts to take the building is the, the Institute of Peace has a very small contract. The State Department has a contract that's a hundred times the size. Their money is at stake. So now all of a sudden, because of that contract, not really legal reason. They're suddenly on the side of Doge. And yet still this guy, O'Brien, he locks them in the portico of the building and he physically removes this shocking story. The third, about the third assault, the third assault is he figures, configures his only vulnerability is there is one lock on the building that actually a key will open that he can't shut down with the press of a button on his phone. There's one key that's out there. It's in the hands of the, of someone who

4:13works for the private security firm. He, nobody knows it's out there. He assumes that the guy at the private security firm will just keep it a secret, not use it. But he come, but they, they wake up one morning in the private security firm has, has broken in using that key to get in. And Colin watches them on the cameras and they all get into a single room in the front of the building. And he realizes he can sort of seal it hermetically shut. So in prison, the, in prison, the invaders. And there's a, there's a, it's a wonderful scene where he, they realized they're locked in and trapped. And so the Colin, Colin's people call the DC police to say we have trespassers and, and come, come and get them. And the, the guys who were trapped call their bosses and resulting in a call from Ed Martin's office from, you know, me, it's like it escalates inside the Trump administration. He was the US attorney at the US attorney at the time. And in the end, DC police do in fact come, but they come in. They're working for the Trump administration. And it is.

5:14So here's the bigger point of the story. Actually, this is what got me interested. A, kind of, thinking this was a book, a book, because it was such, you know, if you think of Trump won, Trump won the first administration. It was this, this, the signature was in difference in ignorance. Like he didn't care at all about running the government. He'd fired his transition team right after the election. He told Chris Christie, you would take him an hour to learn how the federal government worked. He just didn't care. And I think Trump too comes in and they care more than any administration has ever cared in funny way. They're extending their power into places that doesn't belong. They're saying, we're not only going to run the stuff that we're supposed to run. We're going to take stuff that we're not supposed to run. And, you know, the, the Institute of Peace is set up under Reagan and it's set up to be really a, and it's not for the president to control. It's an arms link from the American government for a very specific reason. It's set up to, as a kind of instrument of soft power to be able to go out into the field and hotspots in the

6:18world and, and facilitate conversations between warring parties without it being the US government, sort of quasi government kind of thing. And it's done this very successfully. I mean, you know, it's like if you go to the Pentagon and ask them, are you glad that this place exists? They would tell you, yes, it saved his lives and saved his money. It's stopped, it's stopped conflict. And it, but it only works if this isn't seen as instrument of American power. It's a, it's a, it's a nebulous kind of thing. And legally, they own their building. You know, it's, it's just really clear. The Trump administration's clear what it showed was not only we're going to take everything we can, we're going to show that not only we're going to run everything we're supposed to run, we're going to take everything we can and we're going to show people as a kind of statement. We can do this. And we're going to worry about the law later. So it was, I mean, it's, it's blatantly, I didn't see blatantly illegal, but it's working its way through the courts slowly. Right. That is what it's sort of stunning about the example. There's, there's, and, and I do

7:20want to talk about some of the ways in which there were aspects of the project 2025 critique that were agreed to by people within the government. But part of the reason I say that is because at a certain point, if we're not following the law, it really is about who has the keys and the guns and the guns and the basements. And, and, and, and when the cops show up, who do they point their guns at? Right. Who's side did they take it becomes about people? It's very elemental. It's and, and here at this place, this institute created by Ronald Reagan supported in a bipartisan way for a very long time, you have this security guard basically trying to use the physical building to keep Donald Trump out. Yeah. And he can't. And he ultimately can't. And so it is, I think, because no shots were fired, I think we ignore the importance of who has the guns. Yeah. You know, it's, but, but it was, Doge was very aware. The Trump administration was very aware. We don't want these security guards with guns pointing out at us. We don't want the DC police. We don't want, it's,

8:20it's what we got to, and that just happened without anybody saying much about it. It's interesting. It's outrageous that the DC police turns itself into an arm of the Trump administration. It's outrageous that a private security firm turns itself into, and, and, but it's, it's, so that's, I think the, the very beginning of this story of, of, of transforming the presidency from one thing into another, from extending the power of the president, turning the two million person civil service into from a nonpartisan workforce that takes a oath to the constitution, not to a person into a sort of loyalist operation who meant to serve the personal narrow interests of a single man. Like all of that, those changes are, they just profound changes. And, but, but it all starts with, we have the power, like, we have the guns, and we're going to eliminate the law. We're going to eliminate, and we're going to

9:24eliminate fairness, like, we eliminate all the referees. Yeah, that it's, and I, I do think there's two things happening at once in parallel that get mixed together. One is a shocking and aggressive assertion of executive power, either at the edge of, or in the border between legal and illegal, right? Just trying to push executive power in new ways or ways that haven't been used in a very long time because of kind of norms and institutional prerogatives and deference, right? And then on the other, I've just lawlessness and just we're going to go in and do what we want. And the faster we go, the harder it will be for you to catch up to us with the courts and all the rest. And those things, I think, both are playing out here and playing out across the government. But I think it's interesting. You talk about this difference between the first term and the second term. So in the first term, Chris Christie puts together this transition team, Trump fires him, doesn't need him. It's neglect. It's indifference. It's ignorance. Fundamentally different in the second term. And you say in the book, you know, the Trump team blames bureaucracy for their failures. When in

10:25reality, their agenda was undermined by their own ineptitude, right? That they chose people with little management experience to run these agencies. And then we're dumbfounded by their failure to be able to kind of yoke the machine, get the machine to do as to their, do their bidding. Were you in the White House when they came in the first time? No, no, I was, no, I was out here. I was host in a post. I see. Okay. Because there are people in the White House who tell you that I can remember stories from the fifth risk I wrote a book about the Trump one, who were like Jared Christian is being is bewildered that everybody's leaving the White House. They thought they just stayed. You know, that they did the level of, they just, I don't know what they thought. It would just ran on autopilot or something. But the level of indifference the first time was incredible. I mean, did that that I went and got the first briefing to be got about how the nuclear arsenal was run because they didn't go bother to bother to do it. That kind of thing. And, and so this time, and, and the subsequent complaint that like whatever Trump didn't have any great policy plans, he's not like he came in with a great plan and then it didn't get executed. He, he came in without

11:30any particular interest in doing anything. He said, you know, the dog caught the bus. He was, he got to be president and spraised him. And, but he wasn't there for any particular purpose. And so the idea that like there's this deep state that undermined him was insane. But that, that's, and it's a line they start to pedal very hard towards the end. And it is true that when he broke the law or when he sought to do things that were that were illegal, that there were people, there were mechanisms inside the civil service to get in his way. And he didn't like that. But that's a, that's like, that's kind of a separate thing. But you, but you see this playing out in all kinds of ways, right? He says, like, if you don't let me put my name on the Kennedy Center, well, it's just going to go to pot and then we'll have to tear it down, right? And no one saying that the president can't institute a plan to repair the Kennedy Center, just need to do it competently and legally according to the rules, right? The frustration of the, kind of, shambolic, lawless effort leading to roadblocks. And therefore, the deep state is stopping us,

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15:40the neglect and ignorance and the kind of aggressive destruction that sort of I think that kind of marries the two. What happens when Howard Ludnick takes over a commerce and how did that impact an agency that has very rarely been seen as sort of political, which is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, the place you go to find out what time it is exactly. Yes. So NIST is one of those agencies every American should know about this because it's fascinating. Established in the early 19th century or late 19th century to just make it to create standards, it's called as a Bureau of Standards. Like there are arguments about what a yard is or what a pound is. And if you traveled America in 1902 and you tried to buy a pound of butter, you'd found that the pound was not a pound anywhere. And so it starts that way. The character in the book who carries the water for the story is a fellow named Alex

16:45Maren Gidey's who invented an entire fire science inside of NIST. He was he invented the science of wild land, urban interface fires, you know, palisades. The fires that are the fires we're all talking about. That's exactly what he is. He's like, how do you study these things? And how do we defend ourselves against them? Get it quickly just just to set this up. So NIST, why is NIST doing that? In 1904, there is a the Great Baltimore Fire which becomes the Great Baltimore Fire because when a fire set starts in a warehouse and fire trucks come from surrounding areas, the threads on their hoses don't match the fire hydrants in Baltimore. So they can't put out the fire and just spreads. It's kicked NIST to create a standard for a fire hydrant in a hose. So that's how they get into fire. The the reason your smoke detectors are where they are and they work the way they work, the reason your sprinklers are where they are and they work the way they work, the reason buildings are designed where they exist where they are. All came out and NIST did a lot of the original

17:48research. It's filled with these tinker types. These it's kind of a I mean in a twist of dial on the kind of person who works at NIST and they end up in some academic science department. But they like to their hands. They do stuff. Yeah, yeah, they do stuff. And Alex, the character in the book came to NIST because he had been he had been one of the world's great fires, big fire experimenters. He set fire he worked for the Navy, set big fires on ships to see to test retardance and how you would put them out. So he had he had experience with with setting huge fires and getting information out of them. When the World Trade Center when 9-11 when the World Trade Center falls, NIST is assigned to figure out like why did it fall? Like why do those towers fall? They weren't supposed to fall. And the arguments were that the fire could never have gotten so hot that it melted the steel beams. And Alex is brought and he re-creates, he rebuilds floors of the World Trade Center and sets them on fire. And he's he's the reason we know he's one of the part of the reason we know why the towers fell because the Jews. Yes, because you know, God,

18:54you just had to say that. You just had to say that. So this is all backstory because you need to know this Howard Lutnik is I mean, it's kind of a downstage voice in the book. But Alex, you know, and the point of the story of Alex is so he comes to NIST in 2002, they're abouts. And he has enough flexibility to to invent like he knew he wanted to invent this new science. He knew he wanted to go invent go study big big fires and wiped out communities and see if he could create new standards of how you built communities or design communities to give to make them more defensible. So just one example that comes from the book that just like a small like this is the kind of thing where no one has to be doing this work exactly good that they are. So for example, where should people clear things that can burn from their houses? Well, clear it away from the house. How far away? How far away? Well, it turns out that actually those rules which are common sense, you're you're moving stuff away from your house but towards your neighbors. That's right. That's like a small example from the book of like just a smart guy thinking things through on our behalf.

19:58When you walk through his suburban Maryland neighborhood with him and by the way, what he would tell you is like we spend a lot of time talking about West fires out here. He said the east is the tender box. He said that all it takes is six weeks of dry and this of no rain and the east these coast is waiting to go up. So he says you walk through one of these neighborhoods and you see it in a completely different way through his eyes. You'll see a wooden fence that runs the length of a block. He'll go that's how the fire is going to travel from that house to that house. That fence is a really dangerous thing and it's all it's all fallen out of this research he's done basically by himself. Very small team at very little expense. And he's been doing it. The point of his story is that and this is I don't want to undermine your point but no please. The point of the story is that it isn't just Trump. It's that that it's that we have that the way we run our government it's made it harder and harder for people like Alex to do what they do. When he starts he's able to use the NIS fire lab just on the side when it's open to

21:01just throw it throw some trees in and burn them and see what happens kind of thing. He's he creates this science sort of like in his spare time. That's how it begins until until people start to see how valuable it's going to be and then he gets some proper funding but but but five years in this is an example. This is an example of government gets kind of clergy. Five years in at a NIS lab in Colorado someone has an accident with plutonium. It's it triggers a congressional investigation which triggers all these new rules about experiments and Alex then to you know when this downtime in the NIS lab which happens you know when he happens in the in the spur of the moment he needs now needs to get six signatures to get to run an experiment. So his life has gotten a little harder and harder and harder until you get to Trump too. He was able to keep doing his work until he gets to Trump too and and he gets to Trump too. He's already kind of tired and worn out and Howard Lucknick comes in and NIS does inside the Department of Commerce and by the way Howard Lucknick lost his whole firm in 9-11 and his floor up from the building the floors that that

22:04just floors up from yes Alex modeled Alex Alex actually explained why Howard Lucknick's whole firm died that he that that Howard Lucknick doesn't see this connection but they are there there's a connection between these two people. You would think you know a perfect world Howard Lucknick would know exactly about this research. He would know all about the Department of Commerce. He'd go in and shake Alex's hand and say what do we need to do to help you? Or at least when he gets the job you think you're excited to go meet the people that work for you because it's a job you have a job now. You're going to go do your fucking job. Yes. So Howard Lucknick is the reduxio ad absurdum of a bigger problem and it is that we stopped asking what qualifications should a person have to run one of these federal agencies. They they that there's sort of it's very weird what what they get tested for. Did they know Jeffery Epstein? Not not that's that's sort of I mean you don't want him to know Jeffery Epstein but you really want to know that they know it's inside the Department of Commerce and you really want to know that they know that they can run this sort of organization. The some felt experience with the things the Department of Commerce does the weather service or

23:09whatever that would help. It's remarkable how we install people to be the temporary heads of these places with enormous power over them without knowing anything about them. So Howard Lucknick really knows nothing about the Department of Commerce and and he doesn't care. So what he does is he arrives doesn't really show in his office much. He's in the White House all the time because he wants to be with Donald Trump. But at the same time insists on micromanaging what's going on going going on in commerce by proving checks. It's just like anything over $10,000 I have to sign which just shuts things down because he's not there to sign them. They're like lines of people. He shows up in the evening for an hour and their lines of people outside his door waiting to please could you just look at this and sign the check. Alex's credit card is taken away. He can't buy supplies for his for his lab. It just it basically grinds him to a halt and he was already a point where they're making it so hard. I'm exhausted. I can't I can't do the work. And so he leaves.

24:13He leaves and funny enough I'm taking the code to this. So Alex left about a year ago. But he was so worried about the research. The research is the research that will save our lives. It will it will it's the research that will help us defend against this coming threat. This growing risk and he says like that knowledge that we created is one person deep. Alex had a young assistant. He's trying to kind of jam into the young assistant's brain all he needs to know. But Alex kind of needs to be there. So for the last year he's worked for free just before before he leaves and goes back to Greece where he came from. And he said to me he just read the 20,000 words in the book about his fire science. And he said nice job. He said I'm now going to have to go turn in my laptop because I'm sure they're coming for me now. And it was it was it was it was he's afraid that he's afraid that just the public exposure of the consequences of the way they're running this thing

25:13in the person of him is going to cause trouble for nist in him. When it really really should it's cause someone to come and get rid of Harold Lutton and get someone in there to run the place. But it's it's incredible. And I don't know what you were like just broad view of the government is as opposed to politics. But whenever you kick around the government you find all these Alex Marring Gatys you find all these people who've got some weird expertise who were doing something that you might think in the back of your mind the market would do like you might think like the insurance industry would be doing this. And they kind of do a little bit of it. But in fact, no that that they're they're they're these whole the market the market especially with public safety stuff. The market is terrible and and the government does all this great stuff. And it's usually someone like Alex who has just an obsession with the problem and he sees how big the effects are going to be if he can solve the problem and he goes down the rabbit hole and he works 100 hours a week and he doesn't get paid very much and he could be being paid way more in the private sector. And doesn't

26:16even expect you to cheer for him. He doesn't even want attention. He just wants the freedom to solve the problem and that we as a society have created these obstacles and that the Trump administration comes in and sees it says like oh that's deep state. It's insane. It's insane. You look at the moments where there there are these innovations or discoveries or sort of promising research that produces results like this. And it is these are moments of small groups of people with the freedom to maneuver try things right. You can talk about DARPA you could talk about the Manhattan project. But that you know, but startups that make incredible things. You talk about the Facebook at the beginning whatever. And it's a group of people with a passion and a freedom to explore their ideas and no one kind of watching every you know you don't want to waste money but no one watching every dollar and every little penny that goes out the door. Whether that's because they're independent or that there's leadership that has enough trust and respect for what they're doing.

27:20Trust in and respect for what they're doing to give them the space to operate this and and and you know one example you have in the book is that before long before Trump shows up there used to be a travel agent. There used to be a travel agent and the travel agent worked for this department and so for this and so when you wanted to go look at a forest fire or go to a research lab or whatever you would call this person say hey I need to do this trip and that person say all right let me get you the information right. And so in order to just quote unquote save money they cut that department and now the scientists have to book their own travel and they have to go to seminars where they learned about how to save money on airplane tickets right and you may be able to show on a ledger somewhere that some money was saved right. But in the end result the government is less efficient and less effective and the the the people that you have presumably hired to do to provide their comparative advantage now have to spend more time doing administrative tasks and you see that fucking everywhere. You see it everywhere and at the bottom of it it's probably

28:21something at the bottom of what I'm about to say but at the bottom of it it's this it's so once you start generating mistrust of government it's so easy to just store what's going on inside of it for political gain to point to and go look at look at our radius is they have a travel agent inside of mist. You don't have a travel agent. Yeah they have a travel agent. Yeah and in fact is you want them to have a travel agent because you want them doing the science. You don't want them learning how to book airline tickets and and it's it's we have paid an enormous price for people just not understanding what the government does and this this this cyclone of mistrust that is spun up and then it just gets and ends up like running through the government and hitting whatever it hits willy nilly and it creates this I mean one it creates the travel the elimination of the travel agent but in the minds of the people who are working there if you're there I mean not everybody in the two million person civil services great that that I'm sure there's there is waste of course

29:21there's waste there's not a lot of fraud because they get watched the so close it may be fraud perpetrated on the government by American citizens but the idea that people in the government like stealing a lot of money from the government that's probably unlikely it is inefficient in ways contractors are making making money that's yeah that but that's why I mean it's a fair question like why we subcontract so much why we don't have the capabilities inside but but the over and over in these things I've written about the government I didn't go looking for like the the rare person who was doing something good they're all over the place people who who bus their ass who have who really have a sense that like they want their lives to mean more than just like they made money for themselves they got famous they want to do they want to serve they care a lot about the democracy they care a lot about about whatever thing they're doing inside the government whatever specialty they're practicing and they really just want to keep their heads down and do

30:22their work and the idea that whenever they look up they're seeing a more and more hostile gaze like yeah like it's just so it's it's like it's like we have we're the best of them are the best among us and if you treat them with this kind of cynicism you're driving out something that's just essential to the society it's like like why should I bother you know we're gonna become grease you where should I bother like throwing my weight into something that's gonna help the collective if I'm gonna be punished for it it's a right like you're you know doing doing work that might make more in the private sector or with the skills of talent that could get a much more high paying job but instead choosing to do this maybe one of the perks is yeah there's somebody that helps you with the travel so that you can put right there there are advantages to working for the government that come with like some prestige and some respect if not money especially when the the rounding error that is nist the rounding error that is the US institute of peace compared to like what when

31:26when people talk about where our tax dollars goes it right it's it's interest pentagon a health care and so this can we talk about this for a minute because it is interesting to me it's interesting to me what the difference between what doge and the Trump administration this time around said they were doing and what they are doing because what they said they were doing in the very beginning was we're coming to cut the cut the deficit right melemus said we're gonna cut two trillion dollars out of a seven trillion dollar deficit but but then he ignores interest payments on the debt military and entitlements which is about 75 percent of the budget it was mathematically impossible to cut two trillion dollars out of this last little slice he's attacking what he's attacking is a nonpartisan civil service it does lots of other things a lot and and um and then doing it in a kind of very haphazard way cutting things willy-nilly firing people willy-nilly not not really for cause just because fire whoever you can kind of thing and so clearly he's this is not a stupid person clearly the way he went about

32:29it was not going to achieve what he said he wanted to achieve so the quip so either either he's a stupid person he just really didn't know and he was like in a attention star drug-addled attempt to do something and he didn't it wasn't thinking about it or he was actually trying to do something else and that's the and that what is the something else then like what did they actually it's assume assume for a minute they got what they were after as opposed to it was one giant failure and and I think that what they have done is so uh is they've traumatized the workforce the government workforce they have eliminated a lot of the checks on presidential power um firing inspectors general you know that the referees are all gone um also culturally shifting what is acceptable for president to do that's exactly right that's exactly right it's sort of like if we can do that we've established we can do this so we can do anything and um that they've created

33:30with what it really is where the preconditions for a big power grab that was what it was that's and um I'm not sure they were smart enough to think that way but that it but it's possible that's just what this was um and and all the noise about we're gonna eliminate waste fraud and abuse uh and where that was just noise that actually didn't they didn't never thought they were going to do that in the first place. Paz de America is brought to you by trees.com if you're a regular listener of this show you've heard us talk about fast growing trees but now they are trees.com the same trusted online nursery with a simpler name trees.com is America's largest online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over three million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs including fruit trees privacy trees flowering trees shrubs and house plants all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. Whatever you're looking for trees.com helps you find options that actually work for your climate your space and your lifestyle. trees.com makes it easy to get

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35:39plants and better growing trees at trees.com using the code crooked a checkout trees.com code crooked now is the perfect time to plant let's grow together use crooked to save today offer is valid for limited time terms and conditions pay apply. Pate of America is brought to you by built here's a question are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or your mortgage right now if the answer is no you have to check out built becoming a built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Built points can be redeemed for flights hotels lift rides amazon.com purchases future housing payments and much more they actually have a ton of different ways you can redeem your points you can go to fitness classes you can use it for amazon.com they have gift cards at well over a hundred brands there's tons and tons of different ways and built new AI neighborhood concierge doesn't just answer questions it executes tasks for you from paying your rent and healing a lift to booking dinner reservations across 50,000 or more partners it handles your to do list while automatically applying your member benefits what you do is first you download the built

36:40app second you link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases your local spots become even more rewarding and then third ask the neighborhood concierge in the app pretty much anything it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home download the built app and join the membership for where you live at join built dot com slash crooked that's J.O.I.N.B.I.L.T. dot com slash crooked use our link so they know we sent you I do think a little bit is this is looking for your keys where the lights are shining you know they can this is where they can make trouble right it's actually very difficult trump is a time she's talked about cutting entitlements the times he said he won't there's obviously not a lot of good politics in the Paul Ryan style of entitlement reform right he's made all kinds of claims about cutting taxes which he's done right and about cutting the debt which he has of course not done but by the way you know much to get debt is grown in his first two years three and a half trillion

37:40dollars of course and by the way any beings you would have potentially gotten right like there's there's there's some debate as to where there is going to be legitimate savings from doge legitimate meaning like actual long term reductions in what they're spending which is going to be dwarfed by not just payouts to the people that were fired in the first year fine that's one year the IRS has been got it yeah that that we're not able to do the auditing right and by the way you know people to oh like well this is the amount that was coming in an audit and that's gone down what about all the people that are taken a fire on a risky tax scheme because they're pretty sure they're not going to get caught that's right that's money we it's hard to measure what that cost is so I want to talk does get measured I mean when they came in it was already like $600 billion it's not insignificant right so it's you're right it's just going to grow all I mean by that so there's what I'm saying is there's there's the actual amount coming in because of of audits that's going down yep but then there's the kind of amorphous number of how many people are just paying less in tax right and they can dig a guess to admit it but we'll never fully know exactly

38:45how much has been lost because somewhere there's a person who's like I don't think anybody's going to read this thing here's another here's another tax loss it's an interesting one so one of the things they did and it was a sin is they is DHS ice asked the IRS for the tax returns of undocumented workers there's a there's a separate file if about seven million people and it's got the most it's got the best information on their most recent home address it's supposed to be sacred in private it's supposed to be as private as you as citizens tax data we've been telling that population for 30 years that file your taxes and it's it will help if you decide you want to become a citizen one day and no one will ever use any of this information against you it's generate hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes that people paid we now know that they that they actually took this data and went when when used it to grab people in their homes if you're an undocumented worker what are the chances that you're going to pay taxes now you know it's just it creates a kind of

39:49such mistrust it's so so poisonous and once the mistrust starts I mean I keep thinking of Greece it's like the Greeks don't pay their taxes that you want you start to lose the sense of the of the collective purpose it's amazing how it on how quickly it can unravel why should I pay my taxes yes it is uh nobody else is paying their taxes it's the the going from a high trust to a low trust society right and that's his mo that's so trump that when I think about I mean trump is not a huge part of this book but he's he's hovering in the background he's like this gas everywhere and when I think about how he like if you're going to try to kind of predict what he's going to do he's going to find where there's trust and try to destroy it and there's and he might not think quite this way but his blizzard brain operates this way he knows it's some deep level that if he if it he doesn't do well in a high trust environment because he's still on trustworthy right so if if they're eight of us in a room we all trust each other we'll quickly realize that this is the guy this guy's just lying all the time and we won't want to deal with him if we if he can somehow

40:52get us all to mistrust each other as much as we mistrust him he's on a level playing field and he's ruthless in his ability to operate in an untrustworthy way he has an advantage so he's he's sort of like instinctively hostile to places where there's trust and you know what's odd is people if you said to people like do you trust the government they'll say I know I don't trust the government people trust the government every which way still in there in their in their revealed behavior they drink the water they eat the food they hold the dollar they invest in treasury bonds there's there people still basically trust the government even if they say they don't and they act as if they do he's coming for the trust and and it's and you you feel it you feel it right through the book like you feel it every section has that feel like oh he's just undermined some some thing I just I used to just take for granted I used to take for granted that my tax return wouldn't be weaponized against me yeah there's the there's a there's a there's a name for this is there there's a name for this idea that before you eliminate a rule even if you can't chesterton's fence yes

41:56chesterton's fence are you impressed I'm there that was crazy I have impressed but basically explain chesterton's fence yeah so the chesterton fence idea is that it's I think it's GK Chesterton and it was in a response to some numb nut probably doge like movement inside the British government but it's someone comes in and tears down a fence and the fence actually served a purpose and chesterton said it's okay to come down and tear down the fence but before you can tear down the fence you didn't know why the fence was put there in the first place yes then you can tear it down because even if you can't tell why it's there even if it's not blocking anything today there was a reason this fence was built and they still be have a purpose right and so why is it that we have a rule where you can file your taxes even if your income is from breaking a law it's because we want the revenue yes and we want people to file their taxes and pay taxes even on elicit gains yes and by protecting that that brings in more revenue there's a function to it there's a value to it yes and when you when you play with those fundamental things without an up understanding or care you do real damage and that is what they do over and over and over again either by ignorance

42:58or ideology they don't care what the rule is they don't trust that the rule was made in good purpose and so they just eliminated and then we live downstream of those consequences when you see his story like there's lettuce contaminated by cyclospor of for example are you just at the point where you just assume that that is because of the effect of Donald Trump or do you think that that that underneath a lot of these signals these sort of more acute examples a lot of the functions are still working and shit just happens to let us in otherwise some combination I wouldn't blame them for everything in that case I think you can trace it back to the reduction in the number of inspectors of the FDA inspectors and I do I got to say when I was I was on a casting search for this book it was very easy to cast it I had a choice for each section but this was the public safety section and Alex Marringeed is the fire my fire science guy ends up being the character but while I was going roaming the government looking for who I might write about one of the people I did

43:58interview was the head of the former head of the FDA food safety division and he said bad stuff this is before the lettuce and the cyclospora but he said look this is bad stuff is coming I can tell you that they're doing it in a way that it's just not it's just not going to work as well and a lot of good people are being run out so it's not there is a connection of course there is a connection I tell me if you think this is dumb I mean you know that I the book has a frame and the frame is the government does we all basically agree with the possible handful of people who've read too much of iron rand we all agree that there's some things the government needs to do because the private sector won't the private sector won't make long-term investments in scientific research research that won't pay off for a very long time the private sector just doesn't do that the private sector probably won't generate a useful military that's better than government to do that the private sector won't

44:59actually invent a new fire science to protect us from wild land urban interface fires so the these things that the private sector won't do you can kind of carve these things up into these buckets like the things that like there is a public safety bucket there is a there's a the science bucket there is the data collection bucket there you know the private sector won't do the census it won't it won't it won't collect climate data it won't there's all kinds of stuff like that and what what interested me was to wander through the Trump administration the second Trump administration and ask how when you turn the executive branch from what it was to what it is now from this non-partisan sort of task oriented thing into a loyalist operation serving the interests of Donald Trump how does it affect the different functions and it's a little different in each case it's not all one story it's it and and so that's that was that's the frame of the book so my question is do you think that's a dumb frame or do you think it's an interesting frame do you think that way about it

46:02so I think it's an accurate frame for describing what you describe in the book I guess what I was thinking about so there's this moment where this guy Tim Curry he's at the office of personnel management he's liked by everybody it seems management like trusted trusted trusted unions like him he actually has some bite you know he's so street cred bipartisan street everybody every administration thinks for some reason he's secretly on their side right which is an incredible talent for somebody at the at the intersection of political appointees and career point yes an important intersection and as you know you you say this in the book that that he sees project 25 2025 and one of the things that project 2025 talks about in between some ridiculous ideological bullshit around the deep state is hey the civil service is rated as being 99% effective and only 0.1% performing poorly right come on yeah that's absurd it is absurd there's there are too many bureaucratic hurdles to giving people good feedback too many managers are not holding standards yes and that's something this guy agrees with yes and it's true it's true and yet the hard work of addressing that

47:05problem is not something the administration's interested in and so when he's in he's in this job and he doesn't get the when when who comes knocked on his door it's not the authors of project 2025 it's a bunch of fucking those twerps who seem to have absolutely no idea what anyone that this place does but they're sure it's on important or or at best it's destructive yeah and it's and the way they go about cutting the workforce is interesting they just told cut it how you can cut it and they don't address the basic problem which is it has gotten hard it is too hard to fire people it's too hard to hire people they do need protections you if you're gonna have a nonpartisan workforce you they do need some protections because you can't have the republican coming in a fire on the democrats and the democrat coming in and firing all the republicans and the truth about the workforce is it I mean most of them are not they're not living their politics in their job they're usually the politics is like that's not a part of it uh but but um instead the doge people go from place to place and they figure out pretty quickly that while it's very hard to

48:06fire someone with civil service protections it's not at all hard to fire people who are the so-called probationary workers and that's people who've been in the job for like two years or 18 months for short time so it's a pool of people that's quite large pool of people uh who've only been around for a couple of years now who are those people the they're the young people is exactly who you don't want to fire and there people have been brought in for because there's some immediate problem they have some special skill that is of the moment they fire these people now it's actually against the law what they did because you're supposed to fire these people for cause and what they did is they went from place to place and say you're all fired for cause which was demoralizing to talk about taking a thousand idealists and turn them into cynics if you're like this young person who wanted a work working government because you wanted to give back or you wanted to help or you wanted what you had some skill that would benefit the society and you're doing well and you get told you're being fired for cause and it's offensive and but they did that he started watch Tim Curry watched the watch that mean really I can't my job is to adjudicate fairly the disputes between

49:09the political and it's a naturally fractious sort of environment that that border between the political people who come in to run it and the permanent civil service it's by the way like attention that is irreverable is it is a real the spoil system where they could come in and fire everybody didn't work they create the civil service in response that it has problems there's no perfect answer for how to stop a government that's that is run by political people but ultimately has to provide continuity it is a deep challenge it is a deep challenge and and he just but he realized what I loved about Tim Curry is that he seemed to be able to weather any political change like Trump won didn't phase him at all the Trump people thought he was just great and that this thing is so different he realizes that his job is to ensure that the tensions don't escalate resolve disputes before before they get really ugly to preserve the sense of fairness and and it's this whole life he doesn't have a family doesn't have a cat he works a hundred hours a week everybody trust him he has a physical response he start his heart rate goes up his blood pressure goes up he

50:15actually thinks I I physically don't survive in this environment he could have survived any other environment and I thought it was just it's a canary it's canary in the mind shaft right and he doesn't sign out he refuses to sign off on firing like 7,000 people for costs right that's fundamentally and I think the weirdly the thing to drove him over the edge was when Elon Musk so the doge people sent out that email to the two million person workforce saying list the five things that you did last week that were useful which sounds like I guess if you're working a private company you think all that why are they upset about that like we get that kind of thing in the private sector all the time I would say if if you got that in the private sector like that is so stupid I just that is so insulting and stupid and trying to solve like if you believe that you're at an organization where no one is doing anything and everyone is lying to you and the managers aren't managing and the staff isn't working and and no one's telling you the truth that your only solution is to ask every single person what they did last week did you're you're so far

51:18gone from like actually being able to solve a prize ridiculous Pots of America is brought to you by Walmart Walmart keeps prices low for 150 million Americans every week they help families save on food clothing school supplies and countless other necessities in every aisle in fact Walmart's great value product line safe shoppers up to 35% every year compared to national brands this means families have more to spend on pizza nights birthdays and all the moments that matter because when Walmart says save money live better they mean it learn more at walmart.com slash save money I want to come back to this idea of private sector first public sector because it's like that that's just laziness at root that is I don't want to do the hard hard work of going through and meeting with managers talking about individuals as individuals what's

52:20working what's not I want to do it with a with a cleansing fire and like that to me is what this problem was they even read the emails right so I mean that and and the amount of disruption I mean what is in the extreme case what does a spy do when he gets that email what does someone who is is in the sensitive part of the IRS and looking at people's tax returns do what do they what do they do they there are stories I mean just to the IRS like some huge number of people are at the IRS don't have a computer so the stories of in IRS center you know processing centers like lines forming at the computer terminal and you have to wait three hours to answer this question it was people took it seriously they were told to take it seriously except in a couple of places where Trump's appointees said don't answer like I think maybe the Pentagon did that but but but it's it's um yes it's stupid yes it's insulting and but Tim you know he knew the whole workforce and he knew just how how much trouble that was going to cause how counterproductive it was and he's the person who they should have gone to before they set it out he would save them the

53:25trouble you can imagine a completely different version of Doge where uh there's a team and over a few weeks they go and they meet with department heads and they get you know they go department by department yep and they say hey like you know you your last report said that your workforce is 99.9 percent effective we think that's probably a little bit of an exaggeration yep we would we believe it isn't we're gonna go through and do a 10% cut everywhere and we really want we will do it if you don't do it I'm I don't support doing it this way but you would get like much better way to do it you cut 10% or we'll cut 10% right right and then we need and give us a report as to where and why and we would love to know that and we'll go through it but they don't do that they do it in this ham fisted way and just to come back to your a question you asked at the beginning which is uh how do we choose these people to run these departments right that that uh we ask if they're in the Epstein files and you shouldn't be in the Epstein files but are you interested in these topics you have experience in these topics you have management experience and I actually you look at lid do you even want to be there right are you are really you coming

54:29because you'll get you a ticket to get to the White House and hang out with Donald Trump right and and by the way look maybe you know look there have been times when we've had uh I think of like the the the best in the brightest and these sort of business leaders had all knew each other from college and these these prep schools these high and mighty guys coming in and and and sort of sort of with these arrogant perspectives on how the world should work but they were at least civic minded and they were curious right and they had a sense of of of purpose right like do you need the person that runs the commerce department to have a deep knowledge of uh weights and measures no you don't and actually you can just be a person that was uh incredibly six Howard Ludnic he's a very successful piece right like not him he's a he's a he's a dipshit but like somebody that had his expertise but actually the kind of style of leadership I think the public associates with civic minded corporate leadership who said you know I don't know what you do here but I'm a great manager of people I want to understand it I want to help you guys do your job better right like that is not inconceivable no but it's but instead Howard Ludnic uh has a butler yeah uh who brings him

55:34fancy meals into secure compartmentalized information facilities I mean that's extraordinary yeah yeah right like what what yet know what that's this is and we're not even but but beyond that why don't why why don't we know this already like why why is this just assume tolerated what it's it's it's um it's demoralizing for the people who put their lives it's throw their lives into the business but I don't know predicting the weather or figuring out what a pound is or stopping wildfires from devouring us to to put have someone or protecting data at the IRS or protecting data at the IRS to have someone on top who is so dismissive of the function that they are supposed to be managing I mean it's just you wouldn't look you would not run just for starters I mean this is all this is a big subject but you wouldn't run any private sector organization the way we run the government you wouldn't change bosses every 18 months you know you just you wouldn't do it right you you wouldn't have ignoramuses being brought in to

56:36run places every 18 months you wouldn't change the budget every year you would the the amount of instability that they already deal with is it's such a problem it's such a hard thing to run and their reasons it is the way it is to add on to this this we've just thrown out the window any any standards for who runs the places is it we just not gonna function eventually it's just gonna cease to function so this is I'm coming back to your question about sort of the the framing in the book what I was thinking about is remember reading manker Olsen and I will maybe get it a bit wrong because I read it a very long time ago the rise into kind of nations and about what happens over time as institutions build up interests bureaucracy's guilds rules they get layered and layered and layered and layered and layered and that that after world war two the reason Germany can come back so quickly and the reason Japan can come back so quickly is they got to start again yeah right

57:39now there are problems with this and there are ways in which this is way too simple obviously but you know at the end of the of the book you talk about somebody that was at doge who comes back and decides to actually work at the rrs in part because seem to have learned something about the government and what was needed inside the government and he had tools that would be useful he wanted he's got the spirit right he he can he wants to fix the tax system uh not the system he wants to he wants to he wants to would bother him his name is so hill of in gear would bother him it bother he's a technologist bother hell of him he had to get paper from the iris why can't I do it all on an app he wanted to build an app and he's done it he's come back and he's done it um but it's the story of how hard it was for him to do little things is this is also the story of government the spirit still exists the big problems still exist you know if what you were I thought where you were going with manquerolson was have we hit a point where we can just rebuild it because it's been dose it's effectively been destroyed well this is what I want to this is the the this is what I

58:44did want to talk about because you know he's now this this guy who was at doge is now with the iris lot empty desks a lot it's alone he's alone uh and i'm wondering if you're seeing anyone any democrats any policy makers anyone who's thinking but this is now an opportunity i i keep waiting for this i i seem to be a whole in the political marketplace for someone to talk about government is opposed to talk about talking about trump i i just don't maybe it's just a boring subject maybe it's that people just don't care i just but i don't believe that the the books i've done have way outperformed with anybody expected there seems to be an appetite for this stuff i i keep waiting for the candidate to arise who says we're going to think rethink how we govern ourselves and because a lot of it makes no sense and trump is a symptom of a lot of big problems that if everything was working just beautifully doge would never have been allowed to come in and trash it there are a lot of coming in trash it because people have sensed that some of this isn't

59:44working maybe they can fix it uh and they're and it's vague where they take it for granted or they take it for granted but i so i it does feel to me like there is a vacuum in our politics and and that there's a hole there waiting for someone to walk into it a role to that's waiting to be played and it is a person who it's explainer and it's an explainer in a builder role explain and and rebuild this thing uh and that i don't think it's that hard to interest people in it and this is where i also was just thinking about the way democrats talk about the government the way trump talks about the government there was a uh uh a piece the other day talking about um how trump wields executive power and with all the downsides and how he does it but we haven't had a president in our lifetimes that has been so aggressive at making decisions from the white house uh to great ill effect right but when i you know i talked to uh very dillard long time media ran paramount ran fox kind of

1:00:48created this company and he talks a lot in his book about how he'd be in these meetings with people that would give him all the research data what people want to see on television right and of course that data is always wrong right it just gives you a frame by which you can make decisions but of course what matters is it good is there a great writer do you love it do i does my instinct tells me something right and i think sometimes democrats valiantly believe in making data driven decisions right but then you end up with your accuracy that's 99.9 percent effective yes and then trump comes in and has no respect for for past and no respect for for numbers and no respect for facts right but knows how to wield power and you know that tells story and and has an instinct yeah right an instinct that defies the polls and often shocks democrats by being effective right and i'm like looking for what when i'm reading what you're i'm like where is the person that can understand power right and understand where you should and should not be making evidence based decisions but rather

1:01:50decisions based on philosophy or theory right but actually respects and cares about the civic purpose of our government and that to me is the opening that i see right from the very beginning in writing about trump's approach to government i've had this feeling that we're in this narrative war that he has a story in the other side doesn't have a story and that what the purpose of blockers the purpose of this is to show you a story that's a true story that is a constructive story and and it's that that surfacing these narratives is actually it isn't just entertainment they're fun it's kind of fun to read about kind of thing but it's that it is actually absolutely essential to the preservation of the democracy that you need to have the narrative and we throw a loss the narrative yeah and i and i do think it's about who can appreciate this who sees what's been happening with the government sees the value of what people are doing at the IRS and nist and at the office of personnel management but actually understands that the that we're without just a platitude of

1:02:56we're not going back or we're going to build something better than before but actually is going to have the people that are eager and excited for the project of building a functional working faster better government than what we can right and that's the conversation that i think is missing yeah michael luis thank you so much for your time the book is called blockers it's it this is out sunday you can pre-order it now it's out on Tuesday it's really worth your time thank you for your time and we'll talk to you next time thanks john thank you to michael luis for joining us thank you for listening and we will be back in your feeds for the brand new episode on Tuesday positive america is a crooked media production our show is produced by austin fischer solruban mechana robert's and michael goldsmith with re charlin a lajacone and aadrian hill our team includes mat de grove benhefco Jordan canter charlotte landis kenny mothat adam lipper joseph dutra desmond tailler dan ferro david toles mea kelman ryan young and neomy single our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of america east