March 28, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- Allergies are so bad right now & an interview with DOGE
- More with the DOGE team
- So much waste being found by DOGE
- The doctor who tried to kill his wife & the worst NY Post headline
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Jetty and he.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Allergies are brutal apparently nationwide, more states with high allergy.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Alert than I've ever been at one time. Climate change
or who knows?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
What?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Can we get? A giant national hepafilter? Is that possible?
To ask me about that?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wow? And make Mexico pay for it? I don't know.
Something like that would be nice, yes, or just a yeah?
A gigantic series of fans on the border with the
filters to recirculate the air. Yeah, why not? So last
night on Special Report with Brett Bear, Brett sat down
and talked with gosh was it seven guys? Seven? Oh
(01:00):
my lord? With six or seven of the guys who
are heading up the DOGE efforts, including Elon Musk. Of course,
executive producer Hanson has done a fabulous job of getting
us many many highlights, many more than we could play
on air. Meeting time, Jack, I say, I want to
(01:21):
hear a couple from Elon Musk because the interview begins
with him. But i'd really, really like to highlight at
least a little bit from each of the guys because
to me, the great takeaway and Elon is a brilliant
guy and interesting, but between his overexposure and his halting
speaking style, and as a parent of an autistic kid,
(01:43):
I get it, and I'm used to it more or less,
but it can be distracting. And my big takeaway from
it was this is an amazing collection of brilliant people
who are a dead serious about doing what's right for
the American people, not within a thousand miles of the
haphazard monster that the mainstream media is portrayed. So what
(02:05):
do you think of a little touch on all the fellas?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Then why the Hitler salute?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, yeah, we were kicking around a picture on the
Private Well, Jeffrey Goldberg was probably on it. But the
private show thread last night of Musk waving with two hands,
we called it the double Hitler. So obviously we're dabbling
with Nazism here to even play it. But so here's
Brett Bear with Elon Musk talking about when they took
(02:37):
a look at the government books, what they found. We'll
start with fifty one Michael and.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But
for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out
in this process?
Speaker 6 (02:47):
The sheer amount of waste and ford in the government.
It is astonishing, It's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter
wastes of a billion dollars or more casually. You know,
for example, like the simple survey that was literally ten
(03:08):
questions survey that you could do with survey monkey quashed
about ten thousand dollars. Was 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 pays me no
feedback loop for what will be done with that survey?
Sole say, we would just go to nothing. It's like
you're saying you tacking.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That's nice.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah. And then to the criticism that they are making
mistakes and running rough shot over the federal bureaucracy fifty
three Michael.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
There obviously are dose critics who are reading all kinds
of stuff. Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the
aisle are attacking you, and they characterize the approach is
this fire ready and then aim and.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
How do you approach that. How do you respond to that.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, I do agree that we act.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
We want to be careful in the cuts, so we
want to measure twice if not thrice, and cut once.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And actually that is our approach.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but
it is anything at that which is not saying that
we don't make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
If we were to approach this with the.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be
like saying someone in baseball's got a bat a thousand
as impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct
them quickly and we move on.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think it's interesting that so the crowd that's angry
at DOGE, they don't get angry when they hear the
government spent a billion dollars on a ten thousand dollars survey.
And then it's not even for anything anyway. I mean,
that's all money that could be going to programs you
like that eventually won't happen because we'll be broke, or
(04:55):
you should be angry that they're taking your money at
all that you earned, not letting you and spending on that.
You have no anger about that, only about when they
get it wrong now and then before they can fix it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I'm reminded of Thomas Sole's epic book of Conflict of Visions.
People have just gotten the message that in our tribe
we are anti this, so shout that it's evil and
they say, okay, I will. That's part of all the
rational thought that goes into it, and that's part of it.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I think there is the rational thought of there's endless
government money, or it's not my money, or I don't
pay taxes or whatever, that you just don't care about waste,
fraud and abuse.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think true, a lot of people just don't care
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
And as I've said a million times, that's actually part
of the progressive playbook is to narrow the tax base
as much as possible so there aren't enough votes to
vote against the graft that you spread to your cronies. Anyway,
moving on from Elon Musk Brett now turns to Steve Davis,
and I should have jotted down all these guys credentials.
They touch on some of it, but he's the first
(05:56):
of the many, very very impressive, serious people who is
helping Elon head up the doge thing. Fifty four Michael.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist, Steve Davis,
you are a rocket scientist.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
It used to be yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Now essentially you're the chief operating officer of dough day
to day operations.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
Fair to say, yeah, part of part of the Dose team.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So how did you end up here?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What's the biggest challenge?
Speaker 5 (06:23):
You see?
Speaker 7 (06:25):
The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is
that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think
most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that
in order to have the country going bankrupt would be
a very bad thing, and therefore the country going not
bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are
willing to kind of put our lives on hold in
order to do. I think the thing that's special right
now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed,
(06:48):
that there's an administration that's supportive and a great cabinet
and just a great group that will actually make success
a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring
mission and given the non zero chance of success, it was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Worth h Obviously the voice of a monster, right, and
one principle that hung over in a good way all
of the discussions that was repeated many times is we
need to be adults and recognize the country is going broke.
We need to get serious about this before the train
(07:25):
wreck occurs or the beloved social programs that everybody's screaming about,
even though they're not talking about touching them, really will
go away. The outcome you are screaming about will happen
unless we do this very very serious. Do you think
it's worth resetting the retirement mind? I think that's covered
(07:48):
pretty thoroughly. I was surprised they got into that the
way they did. Yeah, just a great story.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
We played a whole bunch of clips on that several
weeks ago when Elon first started talking about it, that
they still do it paper like it's the fifties down
in a mine.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
For all.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
The retirement paperwork for government employees is just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right, and they're trying to modernize that to make it
easier for federal employees to do everything they need to do,
including to retire. They mentioned you have to take a
seminar to teach you how to retire as a federal
government employee. Let's see, all right, let's skip ahead to
(08:28):
Arab Mogadasi, who is a software engineer as he explains
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The coat is armstrong, Prize Picks run your game. So
the computer systems of the government are a terrible, sad
joke and far from irresponsible frat boys. The DOGE team
is taking a serious look about how to make the
government more responsive to us. Let's start with sixty Michael.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
Parham Moganasi DOJE engineer go into these places, one of
the more than a dozen engineers. First people to go
into the agencies and view the computer data sets. Tell
me what you're finding, and for people who don't understand
how that process works, explain it for them.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Yeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really
excited about DOGE was learning basically the state of government computers.
By some estimates, government it costs about one hundred billion
dollars and it's funding systems that are over fifty years
old in the case of something like Social Security or
the IRS. So really critical systems are old, they cost
(10:37):
a lot of money to maintain, and they can be
the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So
I thought, I'm a software engineer that that maybe can
make a difference here, and.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
That's that's really what.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Inspired me at a high level.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
That's going to be something when you come out of
the tech world where you're probably using the very latest,
greatest of its last week, to come into government and
realize you're using stuff that's fifty years old and figure
out what that even was.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right, And here's another incredibly successful guy who answered the
call and said, yeah, you know what, we might be
able to actually do this for the American people. I'm in.
I'm going to give it a try. I like the
way the next part is framed sixty one sixty two
back to back. Please the first a montage of Democrats
with their messaging over Doge.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions
of dollars from Social Security.
Speaker 10 (11:31):
Elon Musk and President Trump have set their sites on
cutting Social Security.
Speaker 11 (11:35):
Their goal is clear, destroy social Security from within.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
You're in the building, I mean, you're in the computers.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
What's happening there?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
What are you doing?
Speaker 8 (11:46):
Yeah, it doesn't line up with my experience on the ground.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And I'll say the two.
Speaker 8 (11:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I'll give.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
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 positive information.
So when you want to change your bank account, you
can call Social Security. We learned forty percent of the
phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
Speaker 10 (12:25):
That's right, almost half.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yes, And they steal people's social security. Is what happens
is they call in, they say they claim to be
a retiree.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
Then they and they convinced the post the Social Security
posts on the phone to change where the money is flowing,
it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening all
day every day and then and then somebody doesn't receive
their social security is because of all the fraud loopholes
in the social security system.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
They're trying to destroy social Security from within.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And then Musk makes the point, we're trying to make
sure people get more money, not less.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Not politics is awful.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The appalling dishonesty is problem number one. Secondly, standing in
the way of actual improvement is a second evil, unforgivable.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah, we got more of this and other stuff too.
But man, how much of America had heard this take
on Doge. Not very much, Not very many people stay here.
We got a text from somebody listening to this stuff,
the Doge stuff about the computers being out of date,
and he used to work in that world, and he
(13:42):
said a lot of it was they have this stupid
requirement where the new system has to integrate with the
old system so that end users don't notice a difference
during transitions, which means you have to hold on to
all the stuff from the old system for the new system.
And it just doesn't work in any way to try to,
you know, move forward with new technology, so you just
end up sticking with the old stuff, sometimes fifty years.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Down the line apparently, if.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You're just tuning in. Brettbair did a fabulous series of
interviews with the leaders of the Doge effort last night,
including Brad Smith, who is a health care entrepreneur and
is working on the Department of Health and Human Services stuff.
You may have heard in the various lefty media that
they're trying to gut scientific research and causing damage to
our elite. You know universities blah blah blah. Here's Brad
(14:30):
Smith talking about their efforts sixty five Michael Brett.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Smith working at HHS, And obviously another element is Medicare
and Medicaid NIH.
Speaker 10 (14:43):
What do you find it?
Speaker 12 (14:44):
Yeah, Well, I'd say there's a couple of things we're
really committed to in our work at AHHS. Number one,
making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research
in the world. And number two making sure which President
Trump has said over and over again, that we one
protect Medicare and Medicaid. But there's a lot of opportunity.
So if I take NIH as an example today, if
you're a NIH researcher and you get one hundred dollars
(15:06):
grant at your university today, you get to spend sixty
of that and your university spends forty of that. The
policy that we're proposing to make is that you get
to spend eighty five of that and your university spends fifteen.
So that's more money going directly to the scientists who
are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is today
they have twenty seven different centers. They got created over
time by Congress, and they're typically by disease state or
(15:28):
body system. There's seven hundred different IT systems today at NIH.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Seven hundred different ITS software systems.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
They can't speak to each other, so they don't talk
to them.
Speaker 12 (15:36):
They have twenty seven different CIOs. And so when you
think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect
the data.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
Time.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, time, twenty seven different chief information officers correct, correct,
and most.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Of your non technical. So there's a lot there.
Speaker 12 (15:52):
There's a lot of opportunity. It will make science better,
not yours.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
No, No, they're derailing important research. This is Elon is
a Nazi. They need to be stopped.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
I live in a university town and a lot of
people have been really upset about this aspect of it.
And I mean just like sad and scared for America
And how are we going to weather the next three years?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Well, how about this, how about.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Make it even slightly more efficient and you can have
more money to use for your research.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, let's squeeze in sixty six. Michael, you're quite right.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Yes, when I say that our job is tech support,
I really mean it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, we have to fix the computers.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't
get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people won't.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Receive as social security.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
So what we have here are a bunch of failing
computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits,
that are preventing people from preventing research from happening, that
are extremely vulnerable to fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And we're fixing it.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
And does that include AI does that include kind of
changing the system overall? That's what I guess what people
are afraid of is they don't know what this is
all looking like and is it going to affect me
in the long term.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
It's going to affect them, It's going to affect people
very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will
ensure the solvency of the American Government, of the American
of the United States of America. This is what we're
trying to do, is ensure that people do receive their
benefits in the future. And you can all receive your
benefits if the country is operating in a healthy and
(17:30):
competent way.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
I like elon always bringing it back to that, because
that's what drives the whole thing. We're going to become insolvent,
We're going to have no money we're not going to.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Be able to do anything if we don't change it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Course right right next, we'd like to feature Anthony Armstrong,
who's a banking giant who's trying to get a hold
of federal personnel and duplicated efforts and redundancy and waste
in that way, another very serious person doing serious work
for you, not against you.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, so that's on the way.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
If you missed a segment at the podcast Armstrong and
Getty on demand, but stick around Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
But it is.
Speaker 13 (18:13):
Very important to recognize that that the people who work
in government who are working on health.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Are dedicated public servants.
Speaker 13 (18:20):
There are neighbors, there are friends, There are people in
our family who are committed to improving the lives of
people across our country. A lot of them are going
to be losing their jobs and we're all going to
suffer because of it.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
That's CNN had this doctor on who is a former
CDC staffer explaining how cuts and restructuring like Doge is doing.
It's just a terrible idea. We must not improve anything
because there's a huge human cost.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Welling back to the thing I've been complaining about for
a long time, that the idea of somebody losing their
job in government is just something that can't happen.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Well, these are our friends, Jack, these are neighbors. These
are nice people.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So before we get back to more Elon Doge stuff
that is so interesting and not being heard any were
in America. You know the doctor who tried to push
his wife off the cliff and killer. The latest is
he tried to hit her in the head with a
rock ten times an injector with syringes. Oh so more
details to come on that it was definitely premeditated.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
She money insanity. So the interesting part, well, one of
the interesting parts of Brett Bear's interview with a bunch
of Doge leaders last night was that it wasn't just
Elon Musk, who's a lovely fellow and brilliant, but it
was the group of extremely smart, capable, accomplished people who
(19:37):
had been assembled who are working as hard as they
can on improving the federal government how it functions and
it's you know, it's benefits for American taxpayers. Having been
portrayed is as this loose band of frat boy lunatics
in most of the media, these are dead serious people.
For instance, Anthony Armstrong, Morgan Stanley Banker. He is working
(20:00):
for DOJE at the Office of Personnel Management, trying to
modernize and make more efficient that huge part of the
federal government. Clips sixty seven.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Michael Anthony Armstrong, DOZE, Office of Personnel Management.
Speaker 10 (20:13):
You're Morgan Stanley Banker, M.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
And a guy you know money, And this is a
lot of money slashing around.
Speaker 14 (20:20):
There's a lot of money slashing around. It's a lot
of money slashing out the door. And if you look
at the federal government in the way the workforce works,
it's really a one way ratchet over decades.
Speaker 10 (20:29):
So it's all going up. It's only going up. You
never you never take it away.
Speaker 14 (20:32):
So that leads you with duplicative functions, It leaves you
with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the
wrong places. So a couple of examples duplicative functions Brad
mentioned twenty seven CIOs. If you had kept going with Brady,
probably even talk about the communications office.
Speaker 10 (20:48):
I think you've got forty forty distinct.
Speaker 14 (20:50):
Communications offices in HIHS, right, wow forty yeah, yeah, And
that's not unusual, by the way, multiple offices like another
a healthy wow.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
If you had three, you'd think you need three different
communications offices for one agency.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
No, forty Wow, it's a one way ratchet. It just grows.
Next to Michael, this.
Speaker 10 (21:14):
Is not about the employees there.
Speaker 14 (21:16):
There's been many, many hard working, well meeting people who
took these jobs. These jobs were out there, they applied
for them, they took them.
Speaker 10 (21:22):
They're doing what's there. It's just that they're.
Speaker 14 (21:23):
Duplicating the effort of forty offices. So you've got that,
you've got overstaffing. A good example of overstaffing would be
the IRS has got fourteen hundred people who are dedicated
to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join
the RS, you get a laptop and a cell phone.
You're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or
(21:44):
employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the
entire IRS in a little more than a month, so
twelve times a year.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
You can read this.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Why would you have fourteen hundred people whose only job
it is to give out a laptop on the phone.
Speaker 10 (21:57):
Right, The whole IRS could be hand once on a month.
So that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 14 (22:02):
And President trump'son very clear it's scalpel, not hatchet, and
that's the way it's getting done.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
And of course that's all being portrayed as you will
not be able to get the irs to answer the phone,
which they never have, or get good tax advice from
you never have, and these suedus are trying to get
to those outcomes. Anyway. One more fell at a feature.
This is Tom Krause, who is the CEO of the
Cloud Software Group. He is working at the Treasury Department.
(22:31):
We'll start with seventy Michael.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Tom Crass working at Treasury, you are having access to
the payment system oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially those
payments were going places we didn't know where they were going, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Unfortunately that's the case right.
Speaker 9 (22:49):
As an XCFO of a big public tech company. Really,
what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to
the federal government.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And it is.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set
up today.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Michael, let's continue on with this frat boy doge boy
loose camp.
Speaker 9 (23:12):
There is actually really only one bank account that's used
to disburse all monies that go out of the federal government.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Time about one blank account it's a big one. It's
a it's a big one.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's a big one.
Speaker 9 (23:24):
A couple of weeks ago, I had eight hundred million
dollars in it. But it's the treasury gedital account. So
when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here
what they're talking about in terms of the fraud, you
have to ask, well, why is this allowed to happen
at a financial level. Well, it's actually quite simple but alarming.
The Treasury up until now, and thanks to President Trump,
(23:45):
we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that
he just signed the other day which is protecting America's
bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
One, we're changing the culture.
Speaker 9 (23:55):
The culture is been not a lot of caring and
not a lot of commitment to doing what's right. Relative
to financial operations. There's a five hundred million dollars a
fraud every year. There's one hundreds of billion dollars of
improper payments, and we can't pass it on it. The
Consolidated Financial Report is produced by Treasury, and we cannot
(24:16):
pass it on.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
We have material weaknesses. What that means is.
Speaker 9 (24:19):
That if I was a public company, CFO, I would
effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't
issue securities.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Such a question can't pass it on right, the federal
government cannot pass it in ordered.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And you know one more. He makes a great point here.
Speaker 9 (24:37):
We're serving five hundred and eighty plus agencies, and up
until very recently, effectively they could say make the payment
and Treasury just sent it out as fast as possible,
no verification. And so what we're doing is what any
household would do. But imagine you're a household. You have
a bank account. Everyone has an ATM card connect to
that account, everyone has a check book that account. It's
(24:59):
not just your children, it's not just your parents at
you're in LASS, it's your extended family, and they all
can go to the account and disperse funds, no questions asked,
no justification, no verification.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's not surprising to me. It's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But I missed the part where they admitted that they're
just trying to slap Social Security benefits out of the
mouth of a ninety year old woman who's starving and blind.
They didn't get to that part, I guess. And then
finally to put a cap on it bear wrapping up
ret bear with Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at
the Pentagon.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
You're in there.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
The Pentagon has not passed the orders in a very
long time. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, they
will lose twenty thirty billion dollars a year and they
don't know where They literally don't know where it went.
I mean, Senator Collins was telling me about how she
gave the Navy twelve billion dollars for extra submarines, got
(25:55):
zero extra submarines, and then when she held a hearing said,
web the twelve billion dollars they didn't know.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We have howled for years about the idiotic, gigantic theft
that is the bullet train in California, and the other
of the twin towers to government squandering taxpayer money is
the homeless programs in kel Unicornia, billions and billions and
billions of dollars given out. And we all found out
(26:26):
last year that not only do they not know if
any of them have borne any fruit, have been successful,
they don't even have a means to ask the question.
And whether it was that little screed about the Pentagon
or Tyler Hassen, who don't have time to play that tape.
He's working at the Department of the Interior. They were
talking about how they have many, many, many programs that
(26:47):
they are now looking into auditing and realizing nobody knows
who signed this contract, where the money's going. We're not
getting anything out of it, but the checks keep getting
written month after month, year after year. Even so nobody
has any idea what this is. It's just shocking. And
again the effort to rain this in is being portrayed
(27:08):
as the stormtroopers marching across Poland slaughtering the innocent by
you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffreys and aoc Well.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
And half the country doesn't pay federal taxes. You can't
count on that half to be too mad.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
That's really frustrating.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Uh, you know, different topic. It's it's interesting to me
for some reason. It's popping into my head. I can't
imagine what Elon's work day is. I've thought about this
many times. But people always want to.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Win the lottery.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
You know, the lottery gets up to a billion dollars
or whatever, and it makes national news and people are
buying tickets and everything like that, and everybody who wants
to win most everybody hear about who wants to win
the lottery. It's just and so they can live this
incredible life of pleasure. And it's like, you know which
yacht which, how switch car? You know how much pleasure
can you get free? Billain does, Yes, that is my dream.
(28:04):
Go on, and then you got all these guys here
Elon at the head of them who've got that kind
of money, and they're doing the exact opposite.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
They're working. They're busting their ass.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
All day long with mind numbing, frustrating, possibly dead end
work because they that's what they do. They care about
their country. They just they like working. It's interesting, an
enormous challenge. Yeah, it's interesting, and that's why they have money,
because they're built that way to have earned the money
in the first place, as opposed to so many people
(28:33):
who you know, when they think about having that kind
of money, it's oh, man, I'd get up at noon,
I'd go to my yacht, I'd have a ferrari. And
that's not what these guys are thinking. I just find
that interesting. The way they're good at.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
The golf course. Before I went to my yacht. But anyway,
I don't mean to quibble. I've got it right day, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and so on. Yeah, yeah, well, there you have it.
I would love to see somehow elon and more particularly
it's Eve Davis, Joe Jibeiah Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Aaron Moga,
(29:06):
Don Dasi Moganasi. I would love to have them get
out and explain this, but they will not be welcomed
at most media outlets because it doesn't go with the
narrative of their tribe.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Now, you combine the left's love of.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Big government and government workers and all that sort of
stuff with just hatred of Trump, Trump's sport, you got
to be against it. We know all that how the
whole thing works. So it's just yeah, it's tough. It's
stuf sletting well.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And you need to remember always that a big part
of the patchwork that is the Democrat coalition is government employees,
and they are It's a fore alarm fire at the
government employee unions right now because if you have one
thousand workers, three hundred and forty three of whom are
completely redundant, unnecessary, and taxpayer money is being squandered on them. Well,
(30:00):
losing those three hundred and forty three is just purely
a loss to the government unions. They despise the idea
of making government more efficient for tax payers. And so
why do you have a quote unquote civil rights leader
yelling about this, or up with Palestine person yelling about this. Well,
(30:21):
it's that whole intersectionality, the NATO of grievances. You're all
together in this. So yeah, okay, when it comes time
to yell for us, you're gonna yell for us, rightee
government employees, and they say, yeah, of course we will,
So okay. So everybody on the left side of the
aisle acts like making the government better is an unspeakable
horror at the cost of the of the American people.
(30:45):
It's all born by the American people. It's obscene, end
of screed.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
So I got the latest details on that job doctor
who luckily was arrested to is trying to push his
wife off the cliff. Also one of the worst New
York Post headlines I've ever seen, certainly not for the kids,
among certainly among other things.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
On the way stay here.
Speaker 11 (31:09):
The Dodgers got to jump on everybody. They started the
season last week at a two game sweep of the
Cubs in Tokyo. That's how loaded the Dodgers are this year.
On opening date, they're already two games ahead of everyone else,
and they're only spending three hundred and ninety eight point
two million dollars this year to do it, so they
don't even need to steal bases, they just buy them from.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
The other team. You're Dodger fan, it's awesome. If you're not,
it's very annoying.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, the owners are going to be saying we need
a salary cap very very soon, and the players Association
has been staunchly against it. So hello strike or lockout
or something. Someday.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I want to talk about my ongoing sleep problems and
things I've learned and I'm realizing based on texts we
get and statistics a lot.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Do you have trouble sleeping?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
In fact, over half of people say they have trouble
sleeping on a regular basis, half of adults.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Anyway, more on that a.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Little bit later, and then in a few minutes the
one of the worst New York Post headlines I've ever seen,
but ongoing story of the doctor who tried to kill
his wife at the cliff in Hawaii on the hiking trail.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
That story seems to get a lot of attention. I'm
not exactly sure why.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
It good looking, rich people murder love.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Remember I told his story the other day.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
I told the story the other day of someone I
personally know who broke up with a guy, very serious relationship.
Broke up with a guy because they were hiking along
a cliff and he said, man, I could push you
off this cliff right now, and nobody to ever know.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
She was so come out, she's so grouped out about it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
She broke up.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Same hiking trail is this guy. So there must be
something about this cliff that makes you think, wow, there
is nobody around, and that is straight down. They should
rename that trail. You know you got you're tired of
your husband, take your micing on that trail, just to
give him a little elbow.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
The old Hawaiian divorce, right, it's gonna get a name anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It's gruesome.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Obviously, this is horrible, and thank god somebody who's around
to intervene when she started screaming, help, Elpie's trying to
kill me. Two people in their forties. This is what
the testimony is now from her. They're on this trail
in Honolulu, up on a cliff and everything like that.
He stood next to her and said, hey, let's take
(33:31):
a selfie, and then was like edging closer to the
end of the cliff, and she said no, no, we're
too close to the cliff, and like walked away, kind
of freaked out. He then grabs a rock and starts
beating her on the head with the rock. He'd given
up on the hole. This will I'm gonna make it
seem like an accident. I don't know what are you doing,
but it's just.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Trying to get her near the edge. And she backed off,
and he thought, well, I'm all intent on killing her.
Let's see what do we have at hand.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Starts bashing around the head with a rock, gets her
on the ground, then grabs his bag and gets two
syringes from the bag. So this wasn't a all of
a sudden he thought of this sort of plan. He
certainly not he had had this plan in mind. She
starts yelling and help.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Help.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Luckily, he's kind of a weedy guy, apparently, because he
keeps fighting and hitting herund the head with a rock
and she's fine. Well she's not fine, but she ain't dead,
and she's yelling in somebody seasons, somebody runs that direction,
and then he stops, and then he makes up the
whole story of she's lying and she fell and all
that sort of stuff. He's being charged with currently second
degree murder. But what a weird story.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's a freaking doctor.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
I guess you're right. That is part of the appeal.
It's you know, rich, successful white people.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, no offense to anybody. But if a messy trailer
park couple tries to kill each other, nobody pays much attention.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah, it happens on a fair early regular basis.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
And then this headline I don't like. Man says he
im had luck improving this is not for the children.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Oh boy too boy.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Man says he had luck improving nighttime erections by thirty
four percent with shockwave therapy and botox to his penis.
Couple things about this headline I find interesting. First of all,
improving nighttime erections is that the thing, like you mean
while I'm asleep in the middle line, I don't know.
(35:26):
And thirty four percent seems like a very specific number from.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
The Department of the weirdly specific Yes, well, let's bye
bye golly. My nighttime erections seem to have improved by
a third. Wait a moment, let me recal your thirty four.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Percent night after night shockwave therapy. What are you shocking?
And then botox? Oh okay, the botox. Why congratulations on
improving your ntes, which apparently had been letting you down.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Give me botox, not botox, says I, No, inappropriate, I
apologize thirty four percent?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
You say, that's pretty successful. We got more news of
the day on the way.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
If you miss the second, we get the podcast Armstrong
and Getty on demand
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Jetty and he.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Allergies are brutal apparently nationwide, more states with high allergy.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Alert than I've ever been at one time. Climate change
or who knows?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
What?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Can we get? A giant national hepafilter? Is that possible?
To ask me about that?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wow? And make Mexico pay for it? I don't know.
Something like that would be nice, yes, or just a yeah?
A gigantic series of fans on the border with the
filters to recirculate the air. Yeah, why not? So last
night on Special Report with Brett Bear, Brett sat down
and talked with gosh was it seven guys? Seven? Oh
(01:00):
my lord? With six or seven of the guys who
are heading up the DOGE efforts, including Elon Musk. Of course,
executive producer Hanson has done a fabulous job of getting
us many many highlights, many more than we could play
on air. Meeting time, Jack, I say, I want to
(01:21):
hear a couple from Elon Musk because the interview begins
with him. But i'd really, really like to highlight at
least a little bit from each of the guys because
to me, the great takeaway and Elon is a brilliant
guy and interesting, but between his overexposure and his halting
speaking style, and as a parent of an autistic kid,
(01:43):
I get it, and I'm used to it more or less,
but it can be distracting. And my big takeaway from
it was this is an amazing collection of brilliant people
who are a dead serious about doing what's right for
the American people, not within a thousand miles of the
haphazard monster that the mainstream media is portrayed. So what
(02:05):
do you think of a little touch on all the fellas?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Then why the Hitler salute?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, yeah, we were kicking around a picture on the
Private Well, Jeffrey Goldberg was probably on it. But the
private show thread last night of Musk waving with two hands,
we called it the double Hitler. So obviously we're dabbling
with Nazism here to even play it. But so here's
Brett Bear with Elon Musk talking about when they took
(02:37):
a look at the government books, what they found. We'll
start with fifty one Michael and.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But
for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out
in this process?
Speaker 6 (02:47):
The sheer amount of waste and ford in the government.
It is astonishing, It's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter
wastes of a billion dollars or more casually. You know,
for example, like the simple survey that was literally ten
(03:08):
questions survey that you could do with survey monkey quashed
about ten thousand dollars. Was 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 pays me no
feedback loop for what will be done with that survey?
Sole say, we would just go to nothing. It's like
you're saying you tacking.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That's nice.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah. And then to the criticism that they are making
mistakes and running rough shot over the federal bureaucracy fifty
three Michael.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
There obviously are dose critics who are reading all kinds
of stuff. Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the
aisle are attacking you, and they characterize the approach is
this fire ready and then aim and.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
How do you approach that. How do you respond to that.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, I do agree that we act.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
We want to be careful in the cuts, so we
want to measure twice if not thrice, and cut once.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And actually that is our approach.
Speaker 6 (04:10):
They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but
it is anything at that which is not saying that
we don't make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
If we were to approach this with the.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be
like saying someone in baseball's got a bat a thousand
as impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct
them quickly and we move on.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I think it's interesting that so the crowd that's angry
at DOGE, they don't get angry when they hear the
government spent a billion dollars on a ten thousand dollars survey.
And then it's not even for anything anyway. I mean,
that's all money that could be going to programs you
like that eventually won't happen because we'll be broke, or
(04:55):
you should be angry that they're taking your money at
all that you earned, not letting you and spending on that.
You have no anger about that, only about when they
get it wrong now and then before they can fix it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I'm reminded of Thomas Sole's epic book of Conflict of Visions.
People have just gotten the message that in our tribe
we are anti this, so shout that it's evil and
they say, okay, I will. That's part of all the
rational thought that goes into it, and that's part of it.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I think there is the rational thought of there's endless
government money, or it's not my money, or I don't
pay taxes or whatever, that you just don't care about waste,
fraud and abuse.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think true, a lot of people just don't care
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
And as I've said a million times, that's actually part
of the progressive playbook is to narrow the tax base
as much as possible so there aren't enough votes to
vote against the graft that you spread to your cronies. Anyway,
moving on from Elon Musk Brett now turns to Steve Davis,
and I should have jotted down all these guys credentials.
They touch on some of it, but he's the first
(05:56):
of the many, very very impressive, serious people who is
helping Elon head up the doge thing. Fifty four Michael.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist, Steve Davis,
you are a rocket scientist.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
It used to be yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Now essentially you're the chief operating officer of dough day
to day operations.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
Fair to say, yeah, part of part of the Dose team.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So how did you end up here?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What's the biggest challenge?
Speaker 5 (06:23):
You see?
Speaker 7 (06:25):
The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is
that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think
most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that
in order to have the country going bankrupt would be
a very bad thing, and therefore the country going not
bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are
willing to kind of put our lives on hold in
order to do. I think the thing that's special right
now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed,
(06:48):
that there's an administration that's supportive and a great cabinet
and just a great group that will actually make success
a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring
mission and given the non zero chance of success, it was.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Worth h Obviously the voice of a monster, right, and
one principle that hung over in a good way all
of the discussions that was repeated many times is we
need to be adults and recognize the country is going broke.
We need to get serious about this before the train
(07:25):
wreck occurs or the beloved social programs that everybody's screaming about,
even though they're not talking about touching them, really will
go away. The outcome you are screaming about will happen
unless we do this very very serious. Do you think
it's worth resetting the retirement mind? I think that's covered
(07:48):
pretty thoroughly. I was surprised they got into that the
way they did. Yeah, just a great story.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
We played a whole bunch of clips on that several
weeks ago when Elon first started talking about it, that
they still do it paper like it's the fifties down
in a mine.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
For all.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
The retirement paperwork for government employees is just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right, and they're trying to modernize that to make it
easier for federal employees to do everything they need to do,
including to retire. They mentioned you have to take a
seminar to teach you how to retire as a federal
government employee. Let's see, all right, let's skip ahead to
(08:28):
Arab Mogadasi, who is a software engineer as he explains
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The coat is armstrong, Prize Picks run your game. So
the computer systems of the government are a terrible, sad
joke and far from irresponsible frat boys. The DOGE team
is taking a serious look about how to make the
government more responsive to us. Let's start with sixty Michael.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
Parham Moganasi DOJE engineer go into these places, one of
the more than a dozen engineers. First people to go
into the agencies and view the computer data sets. Tell
me what you're finding, and for people who don't understand
how that process works, explain it for them.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Yeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really
excited about DOGE was learning basically the state of government computers.
By some estimates, government it costs about one hundred billion
dollars and it's funding systems that are over fifty years
old in the case of something like Social Security or
the IRS. So really critical systems are old, they cost
(10:37):
a lot of money to maintain, and they can be
the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So
I thought, I'm a software engineer that that maybe can
make a difference here, and.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
That's that's really what.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Inspired me at a high level.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
That's going to be something when you come out of
the tech world where you're probably using the very latest,
greatest of its last week, to come into government and
realize you're using stuff that's fifty years old and figure
out what that even was.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right, And here's another incredibly successful guy who answered the
call and said, yeah, you know what, we might be
able to actually do this for the American people. I'm in.
I'm going to give it a try. I like the
way the next part is framed sixty one sixty two
back to back. Please the first a montage of Democrats
with their messaging over Doge.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions
of dollars from Social Security.
Speaker 10 (11:31):
Elon Musk and President Trump have set their sites on
cutting Social Security.
Speaker 11 (11:35):
Their goal is clear, destroy social Security from within.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
You're in the building, I mean, you're in the computers.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
What's happening there?
Speaker 1 (11:45):
What are you doing?
Speaker 8 (11:46):
Yeah, it doesn't line up with my experience on the ground.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And I'll say the two.
Speaker 8 (11:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I'll give.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
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 positive information.
So when you want to change your bank account, you
can call Social Security. We learned forty percent of the
phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
Speaker 10 (12:25):
That's right, almost half.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yes, And they steal people's social security. Is what happens
is they call in, they say they claim to be
a retiree.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
Then they and they convinced the post the Social Security
posts on the phone to change where the money is flowing,
it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening all
day every day and then and then somebody doesn't receive
their social security is because of all the fraud loopholes
in the social security system.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
They're trying to destroy social Security from within.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
And then Musk makes the point, we're trying to make
sure people get more money, not less.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Not politics is awful.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The appalling dishonesty is problem number one. Secondly, standing in
the way of actual improvement is a second evil, unforgivable.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah, we got more of this and other stuff too.
But man, how much of America had heard this take
on Doge. Not very much, Not very many people stay here.
We got a text from somebody listening to this stuff,
the Doge stuff about the computers being out of date,
and he used to work in that world, and he
(13:42):
said a lot of it was they have this stupid
requirement where the new system has to integrate with the
old system so that end users don't notice a difference
during transitions, which means you have to hold on to
all the stuff from the old system for the new system.
And it just doesn't work in any way to try to,
you know, move forward with new technology, so you just
end up sticking with the old stuff, sometimes fifty years.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Down the line apparently, if.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You're just tuning in. Brettbair did a fabulous series of
interviews with the leaders of the Doge effort last night,
including Brad Smith, who is a health care entrepreneur and
is working on the Department of Health and Human Services stuff.
You may have heard in the various lefty media that
they're trying to gut scientific research and causing damage to
our elite. You know universities blah blah blah. Here's Brad
(14:30):
Smith talking about their efforts sixty five Michael Brett.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Smith working at HHS, And obviously another element is Medicare
and Medicaid NIH.
Speaker 10 (14:43):
What do you find it?
Speaker 12 (14:44):
Yeah, Well, I'd say there's a couple of things we're
really committed to in our work at AHHS. Number one,
making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research
in the world. And number two making sure which President
Trump has said over and over again, that we one
protect Medicare and Medicaid. But there's a lot of opportunity.
So if I take NIH as an example today, if
you're a NIH researcher and you get one hundred dollars
(15:06):
grant at your university today, you get to spend sixty
of that and your university spends forty of that. The
policy that we're proposing to make is that you get
to spend eighty five of that and your university spends fifteen.
So that's more money going directly to the scientists who
are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is today
they have twenty seven different centers. They got created over
time by Congress, and they're typically by disease state or
(15:28):
body system. There's seven hundred different IT systems today at NIH.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Seven hundred different ITS software systems.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
They can't speak to each other, so they don't talk
to them.
Speaker 12 (15:36):
They have twenty seven different CIOs. And so when you
think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect
the data.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
Time.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, time, twenty seven different chief information officers correct, correct,
and most.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Of your non technical. So there's a lot there.
Speaker 12 (15:52):
There's a lot of opportunity. It will make science better,
not yours.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
No, No, they're derailing important research. This is Elon is
a Nazi. They need to be stopped.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
I live in a university town and a lot of
people have been really upset about this aspect of it.
And I mean just like sad and scared for America
And how are we going to weather the next three years?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Well, how about this, how about.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Make it even slightly more efficient and you can have
more money to use for your research.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, let's squeeze in sixty six. Michael, you're quite right.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Yes, when I say that our job is tech support,
I really mean it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, we have to fix the computers.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't
get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people won't.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Receive as social security.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
So what we have here are a bunch of failing
computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits,
that are preventing people from preventing research from happening, that
are extremely vulnerable to fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And we're fixing it.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
And does that include AI does that include kind of
changing the system overall? That's what I guess what people
are afraid of is they don't know what this is
all looking like and is it going to affect me
in the long term.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
It's going to affect them, It's going to affect people
very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will
ensure the solvency of the American Government, of the American
of the United States of America. This is what we're
trying to do, is ensure that people do receive their
benefits in the future. And you can all receive your
benefits if the country is operating in a healthy and
(17:30):
competent way.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
I like elon always bringing it back to that, because
that's what drives the whole thing. We're going to become insolvent,
We're going to have no money we're not going to.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Be able to do anything if we don't change it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Course right right next, we'd like to feature Anthony Armstrong,
who's a banking giant who's trying to get a hold
of federal personnel and duplicated efforts and redundancy and waste
in that way, another very serious person doing serious work
for you, not against you.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, so that's on the way.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
If you missed a segment at the podcast Armstrong and
Getty on demand, but stick around Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
But it is.
Speaker 13 (18:13):
Very important to recognize that that the people who work
in government who are working on health.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Are dedicated public servants.
Speaker 13 (18:20):
There are neighbors, there are friends, There are people in
our family who are committed to improving the lives of
people across our country. A lot of them are going
to be losing their jobs and we're all going to
suffer because of it.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
That's CNN had this doctor on who is a former
CDC staffer explaining how cuts and restructuring like Doge is doing.
It's just a terrible idea. We must not improve anything
because there's a huge human cost.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Welling back to the thing I've been complaining about for
a long time, that the idea of somebody losing their
job in government is just something that can't happen.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Well, these are our friends, Jack, these are neighbors. These
are nice people.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
So before we get back to more Elon Doge stuff
that is so interesting and not being heard any were
in America. You know the doctor who tried to push
his wife off the cliff and killer. The latest is
he tried to hit her in the head with a
rock ten times an injector with syringes. Oh so more
details to come on that it was definitely premeditated.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
She money insanity. So the interesting part, well, one of
the interesting parts of Brett Bear's interview with a bunch
of Doge leaders last night was that it wasn't just
Elon Musk, who's a lovely fellow and brilliant, but it
was the group of extremely smart, capable, accomplished people who
(19:37):
had been assembled who are working as hard as they
can on improving the federal government how it functions and
it's you know, it's benefits for American taxpayers. Having been
portrayed is as this loose band of frat boy lunatics
in most of the media, these are dead serious people.
For instance, Anthony Armstrong, Morgan Stanley Banker. He is working
(20:00):
for DOJE at the Office of Personnel Management, trying to
modernize and make more efficient that huge part of the
federal government. Clips sixty seven.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Michael Anthony Armstrong, DOZE, Office of Personnel Management.
Speaker 10 (20:13):
You're Morgan Stanley Banker, M.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
And a guy you know money, And this is a
lot of money slashing around.
Speaker 14 (20:20):
There's a lot of money slashing around. It's a lot
of money slashing out the door. And if you look
at the federal government in the way the workforce works,
it's really a one way ratchet over decades.
Speaker 10 (20:29):
So it's all going up. It's only going up. You
never you never take it away.
Speaker 14 (20:32):
So that leads you with duplicative functions, It leaves you
with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the
wrong places. So a couple of examples duplicative functions Brad
mentioned twenty seven CIOs. If you had kept going with Brady,
probably even talk about the communications office.
Speaker 10 (20:48):
I think you've got forty forty distinct.
Speaker 14 (20:50):
Communications offices in HIHS, right, wow forty yeah, yeah, And
that's not unusual, by the way, multiple offices like another
a healthy wow.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
If you had three, you'd think you need three different
communications offices for one agency.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
No, forty Wow, it's a one way ratchet. It just grows.
Next to Michael, this.
Speaker 10 (21:14):
Is not about the employees there.
Speaker 14 (21:16):
There's been many, many hard working, well meeting people who
took these jobs. These jobs were out there, they applied
for them, they took them.
Speaker 10 (21:22):
They're doing what's there. It's just that they're.
Speaker 14 (21:23):
Duplicating the effort of forty offices. So you've got that,
you've got overstaffing. A good example of overstaffing would be
the IRS has got fourteen hundred people who are dedicated
to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join
the RS, you get a laptop and a cell phone.
You're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or
(21:44):
employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the
entire IRS in a little more than a month, so
twelve times a year.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
You can read this.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Why would you have fourteen hundred people whose only job
it is to give out a laptop on the phone.
Speaker 10 (21:57):
Right, The whole IRS could be hand once on a month.
So that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 14 (22:02):
And President trump'son very clear it's scalpel, not hatchet, and
that's the way it's getting done.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
And of course that's all being portrayed as you will
not be able to get the irs to answer the phone,
which they never have, or get good tax advice from
you never have, and these suedus are trying to get
to those outcomes. Anyway. One more fell at a feature.
This is Tom Krause, who is the CEO of the
Cloud Software Group. He is working at the Treasury Department.
(22:31):
We'll start with seventy Michael.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Tom Crass working at Treasury, you are having access to
the payment system oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially those
payments were going places we didn't know where they were going, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Unfortunately that's the case right.
Speaker 9 (22:49):
As an XCFO of a big public tech company. Really,
what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to
the federal government.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And it is.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set
up today.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Michael, let's continue on with this frat boy doge boy
loose camp.
Speaker 9 (23:12):
There is actually really only one bank account that's used
to disburse all monies that go out of the federal government.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Time about one blank account it's a big one. It's
a it's a big one.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's a big one.
Speaker 9 (23:24):
A couple of weeks ago, I had eight hundred million
dollars in it. But it's the treasury gedital account. So
when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here
what they're talking about in terms of the fraud, you
have to ask, well, why is this allowed to happen
at a financial level. Well, it's actually quite simple but alarming.
The Treasury up until now, and thanks to President Trump,
(23:45):
we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that
he just signed the other day which is protecting America's
bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
One, we're changing the culture.
Speaker 9 (23:55):
The culture is been not a lot of caring and
not a lot of commitment to doing what's right. Relative
to financial operations. There's a five hundred million dollars a
fraud every year. There's one hundreds of billion dollars of
improper payments, and we can't pass it on it. The
Consolidated Financial Report is produced by Treasury, and we cannot
(24:16):
pass it on.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
We have material weaknesses. What that means is.
Speaker 9 (24:19):
That if I was a public company, CFO, I would
effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't
issue securities.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Such a question can't pass it on right, the federal
government cannot pass it in ordered.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And you know one more. He makes a great point here.
Speaker 9 (24:37):
We're serving five hundred and eighty plus agencies, and up
until very recently, effectively they could say make the payment
and Treasury just sent it out as fast as possible,
no verification. And so what we're doing is what any
household would do. But imagine you're a household. You have
a bank account. Everyone has an ATM card connect to
that account, everyone has a check book that account. It's
(24:59):
not just your children, it's not just your parents at
you're in LASS, it's your extended family, and they all
can go to the account and disperse funds, no questions asked,
no justification, no verification.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's not surprising to me. It's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But I missed the part where they admitted that they're
just trying to slap Social Security benefits out of the
mouth of a ninety year old woman who's starving and blind.
They didn't get to that part, I guess. And then
finally to put a cap on it bear wrapping up
ret bear with Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at
the Pentagon.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
You're in there.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
The Pentagon has not passed the orders in a very
long time. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, they
will lose twenty thirty billion dollars a year and they
don't know where They literally don't know where it went.
I mean, Senator Collins was telling me about how she
gave the Navy twelve billion dollars for extra submarines, got
(25:55):
zero extra submarines, and then when she held a hearing said,
web the twelve billion dollars they didn't know.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We have howled for years about the idiotic, gigantic theft
that is the bullet train in California, and the other
of the twin towers to government squandering taxpayer money is
the homeless programs in kel Unicornia, billions and billions and
billions of dollars given out. And we all found out
(26:26):
last year that not only do they not know if
any of them have borne any fruit, have been successful,
they don't even have a means to ask the question.
And whether it was that little screed about the Pentagon
or Tyler Hassen, who don't have time to play that tape.
He's working at the Department of the Interior. They were
talking about how they have many, many, many programs that
(26:47):
they are now looking into auditing and realizing nobody knows
who signed this contract, where the money's going. We're not
getting anything out of it, but the checks keep getting
written month after month, year after year. Even so nobody
has any idea what this is. It's just shocking. And
again the effort to rain this in is being portrayed
(27:08):
as the stormtroopers marching across Poland slaughtering the innocent by
you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffreys and aoc Well.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
And half the country doesn't pay federal taxes. You can't
count on that half to be too mad.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
That's really frustrating.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Uh, you know, different topic. It's it's interesting to me
for some reason. It's popping into my head. I can't
imagine what Elon's work day is. I've thought about this
many times. But people always want to.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Win the lottery.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
You know, the lottery gets up to a billion dollars
or whatever, and it makes national news and people are
buying tickets and everything like that, and everybody who wants
to win most everybody hear about who wants to win
the lottery. It's just and so they can live this
incredible life of pleasure. And it's like, you know which
yacht which, how switch car? You know how much pleasure
can you get free? Billain does, Yes, that is my dream.
(28:04):
Go on, and then you got all these guys here
Elon at the head of them who've got that kind
of money, and they're doing the exact opposite.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
They're working. They're busting their ass.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
All day long with mind numbing, frustrating, possibly dead end
work because they that's what they do. They care about
their country. They just they like working. It's interesting, an
enormous challenge. Yeah, it's interesting, and that's why they have money,
because they're built that way to have earned the money
in the first place, as opposed to so many people
(28:33):
who you know, when they think about having that kind
of money, it's oh, man, I'd get up at noon,
I'd go to my yacht, I'd have a ferrari. And
that's not what these guys are thinking. I just find
that interesting. The way they're good at.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
The golf course. Before I went to my yacht. But anyway,
I don't mean to quibble. I've got it right day, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and so on. Yeah, yeah, well, there you have it.
I would love to see somehow elon and more particularly
it's Eve Davis, Joe Jibeiah Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Aaron Moga,
(29:06):
Don Dasi Moganasi. I would love to have them get
out and explain this, but they will not be welcomed
at most media outlets because it doesn't go with the
narrative of their tribe.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Now, you combine the left's love of.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Big government and government workers and all that sort of
stuff with just hatred of Trump, Trump's sport, you got
to be against it. We know all that how the
whole thing works. So it's just yeah, it's tough. It's
stuf sletting well.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And you need to remember always that a big part
of the patchwork that is the Democrat coalition is government employees,
and they are It's a fore alarm fire at the
government employee unions right now because if you have one
thousand workers, three hundred and forty three of whom are
completely redundant, unnecessary, and taxpayer money is being squandered on them. Well,
(30:00):
losing those three hundred and forty three is just purely
a loss to the government unions. They despise the idea
of making government more efficient for tax payers. And so
why do you have a quote unquote civil rights leader
yelling about this, or up with Palestine person yelling about this. Well,
(30:21):
it's that whole intersectionality, the NATO of grievances. You're all
together in this. So yeah, okay, when it comes time
to yell for us, you're gonna yell for us, rightee
government employees, and they say, yeah, of course we will,
So okay. So everybody on the left side of the
aisle acts like making the government better is an unspeakable
horror at the cost of the of the American people.
(30:45):
It's all born by the American people. It's obscene, end
of screed.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
So I got the latest details on that job doctor
who luckily was arrested to is trying to push his
wife off the cliff. Also one of the worst New
York Post headlines I've ever seen, certainly not for the kids,
among certainly among other things.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
On the way stay here.
Speaker 11 (31:09):
The Dodgers got to jump on everybody. They started the
season last week at a two game sweep of the
Cubs in Tokyo. That's how loaded the Dodgers are this year.
On opening date, they're already two games ahead of everyone else,
and they're only spending three hundred and ninety eight point
two million dollars this year to do it, so they
don't even need to steal bases, they just buy them from.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
The other team. You're Dodger fan, it's awesome. If you're not,
it's very annoying.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, the owners are going to be saying we need
a salary cap very very soon, and the players Association
has been staunchly against it. So hello strike or lockout
or something. Someday.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I want to talk about my ongoing sleep problems and
things I've learned and I'm realizing based on texts we
get and statistics a lot.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Do you have trouble sleeping?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
In fact, over half of people say they have trouble
sleeping on a regular basis, half of adults.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Anyway, more on that a.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Little bit later, and then in a few minutes the
one of the worst New York Post headlines I've ever seen,
but ongoing story of the doctor who tried to kill
his wife at the cliff in Hawaii on the hiking trail.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
That story seems to get a lot of attention. I'm
not exactly sure why.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
It good looking, rich people murder love.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Remember I told his story the other day.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
I told the story the other day of someone I
personally know who broke up with a guy, very serious relationship.
Broke up with a guy because they were hiking along
a cliff and he said, man, I could push you
off this cliff right now, and nobody to ever know.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
She was so come out, she's so grouped out about it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
She broke up.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Same hiking trail is this guy. So there must be
something about this cliff that makes you think, wow, there
is nobody around, and that is straight down. They should
rename that trail. You know you got you're tired of
your husband, take your micing on that trail, just to
give him a little elbow.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
The old Hawaiian divorce, right, it's gonna get a name anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It's gruesome.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Obviously, this is horrible, and thank god somebody who's around
to intervene when she started screaming, help, Elpie's trying to
kill me. Two people in their forties. This is what
the testimony is now from her. They're on this trail
in Honolulu, up on a cliff and everything like that.
He stood next to her and said, hey, let's take
(33:31):
a selfie, and then was like edging closer to the
end of the cliff, and she said no, no, we're
too close to the cliff, and like walked away, kind
of freaked out. He then grabs a rock and starts
beating her on the head with the rock. He'd given
up on the hole. This will I'm gonna make it
seem like an accident. I don't know what are you doing,
but it's just.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Trying to get her near the edge. And she backed off,
and he thought, well, I'm all intent on killing her.
Let's see what do we have at hand.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Starts bashing around the head with a rock, gets her
on the ground, then grabs his bag and gets two
syringes from the bag. So this wasn't a all of
a sudden he thought of this sort of plan. He
certainly not he had had this plan in mind. She
starts yelling and help.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Help.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Luckily, he's kind of a weedy guy, apparently, because he
keeps fighting and hitting herund the head with a rock
and she's fine. Well she's not fine, but she ain't dead,
and she's yelling in somebody seasons, somebody runs that direction,
and then he stops, and then he makes up the
whole story of she's lying and she fell and all
that sort of stuff. He's being charged with currently second
degree murder. But what a weird story.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's a freaking doctor.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
I guess you're right. That is part of the appeal.
It's you know, rich, successful white people.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, no offense to anybody. But if a messy trailer
park couple tries to kill each other, nobody pays much attention.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah, it happens on a fair early regular basis.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
And then this headline I don't like. Man says he
im had luck improving this is not for the children.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Oh boy too boy.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Man says he had luck improving nighttime erections by thirty
four percent with shockwave therapy and botox to his penis.
Couple things about this headline I find interesting. First of all,
improving nighttime erections is that the thing, like you mean
while I'm asleep in the middle line, I don't know.
(35:26):
And thirty four percent seems like a very specific number from.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
The Department of the weirdly specific Yes, well, let's bye
bye golly. My nighttime erections seem to have improved by
a third. Wait a moment, let me recal your thirty four.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Percent night after night shockwave therapy. What are you shocking?
And then botox? Oh okay, the botox. Why congratulations on
improving your ntes, which apparently had been letting you down.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Give me botox, not botox, says I, No, inappropriate, I
apologize thirty four percent?
Speaker 3 (36:06):
You say, that's pretty successful. We got more news of
the day on the way.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
If you miss the second, we get the podcast Armstrong
and Getty on demand
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Armstrong and Getty
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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