Gov. Wes Moore

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118 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Gov. Wes Moore’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Bulwark Daily · S2 Ep1004: Wes Moore: The System Doesn't Work for a Lot of People · 20 Mar 2025 podcast

Like, let's talk about the fact that there were tens of millions of people who just decided not to vote because they do not think this system works for them. And the reason I know who they are is in many cases, they're actually my family members. You know, I remember when I first ran for governor, I had to convince members of my family to vote for me when I was running for governor.

And it's not that we're not cool, like we're cool. It's that I had to convince members of my family to vote. You had to register to care, to get an assistant. And even the ones who are registered just to go out. because it's like they don't see how this system works for them. And the truth is, it hasn't.

And that's why I think we have to be real, real careful about somehow spending our time defending a status quo, when for real, for many people, the status quo never worked for them. So how are you, you're defending something that's indefensible. That's in many ways, that has been Trump's genius, is that Trump has been a vessel for the frustration He's just not a vehicle for the solution.

He's going to tell you what's wrong, but then he's not going to have an offer or an idea as to how to make it better.

Yeah, but I don't think you have to defend the institutions, right? For me, this is not about saying, oh, everything about the institution is right and you all are not getting right. This is about saying, like, listen, I believe that there are certain things within these institutions that needed adjustments. I actually agree with you.

For example, you know, I was a White House fellow for both the State Department and USAID. And even when I was there, and that was, shit, like 12 years ago, something like that, maybe more, 14 years ago. Even when I was there, I was kind of like, how do these two things work when you ask a single question about how much foreign aid are we giving to Botswana?

Why do you need to talk to eight different people to get an answer? I actually have questioned that for a while. So it's not saying I'm defending the status quo. What I'm saying is there's a way to do this. There's a way to do this is actually data informed. There's a way to do this that is humane. And there's a way to do this that actually makes sense.

And so, for example, one of the first people that I hired when I became the governor was I hired a chief performance officer for the first time in the history of the state. Their job exclusively for the past two and a half years, two years that I've been the governor, their job exclusively has been find the waste waste. within our state agencies. Find the things that were not working.

Find the things that we cannot give any quantifiable evidence of efficacy and let's go fix it or eliminate it. And so, for example, we started doing things like saying, OK, take a look at fleet management. Take a look at data consolidation and IT consolidation. Take a look at real estate. Why are there certain buildings that are sitting on our state balance sheet? I'm like, what does that do?

Get it off our balance sheet. Right. Do a focus on procurement reforms, focus on consolidation of agencies that we can actually start to make sense so we can cut down costs, but also making sure that they're more efficient. That is a smart way of doing efficiency. And in turn, we have saved the people of this state tens of millions of dollars in doing so.

What Doge is doing is just blatant, inhumane and frankly, uninformed cuts by people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. There's a difference. The irony is, is that there are some things that Trump and them are doing that I'm like, you know, in theory, I actually I kind of get it and it kind of makes sense. But, yo, like how we do things matters.

And they are just deciding to, I mean, literally come after Trump. These people come after these agencies in a way that is not at all informed and in a way that is deeply inhumane.

The way we treat our veterans. I'm so pissed about this, man. I'm like, yo, these are people who, and I serve with a lot of them, right? These are people who just every time the country is asked, they've raised their hand. Every time the country is asked, they have said, I will take pay cuts. They said, I will leave my family. They said, I will pick up and move every two years.

They have said, I will miss occasions. I will miss children's birthdays because the country asked me to. Right. And the thing that gets me most about this is we didn't ask for anything in return. Just simply make sure that you honor your promises to us. Simply make sure that you're taking care of our families. We're not asking for anything that has not already been promised.

And so when you're talking about taking out a federal bureaucracy, when you're talking about taking out federal workers, you're doing it without an understanding or maybe with an understanding, which makes it even worse, that one in three federal employees are military veterans.

One in three federal employees are people who have taken off a uniform and are now showing up to make sure that our food is safe, who are now showing up every day to make sure that our seniors are getting health care, who are now making sure and showing up every day to make sure that our veterans and their families can be laid to rest in an honorable way. That's what they're doing.

But then I'm now getting, you know, the doge people who are coming in and saying, yeah, thanks for your service. But now we're going to send you on your way. And I'm telling you what we are doing to U.S. military veterans is disgusting. I mean, our state, I'm really proud of the way our state is being so aggressive in terms of the way we're responding.

One of the things we're doing, one of the many things we're doing is we're standing up these job fairs all over the state of Maryland. I was just at one yesterday, man. And we had a chance to meet with people who are military veterans. One guy named Jonathan, who I was actually with a couple of weeks back.

Jonathan was a US Army veteran who's now was working in Homeland Security, focusing on critical infrastructure protection. And Jonathan was told on Valentine's Day that Jonathan no longer had a job for no reason. I was talking to a guy, Steve, yesterday. Steve is a Republican who now gets up every morning and puts on a suit so his kids don't know that he lost his job.

And he is now showing up at a job fair in Frederick County, Maryland, with his resume looking to be hired. And he has yet to tell his kids that he no longer has a job because he's embarrassed. So he gets up every morning at the same time and puts on a suit. I'm disgusted at the disrespect that they have just repeatedly shown to our U.S.

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