Matt Bernstein

He is recruited more traditionally through what he calls the mutual investor connection, aka through his business background.

Despite only being in his late 20s, he knew someone.

He knew another rich guy who was involved with Doge.

So despite his founder background experience, did Nathan have any government experience?

Let's find out.

Exactly.

Nathan's salary at Doge was $120,000, which was notably a more than 50% pay cut from his previous finance job where he was earning a salary of $250,000.

Let's hear what he has to say about that and why he took that pay cut.

I'm a 20-something-year-old who's made enough money in my career where $120,000 doesn't make a difference to me.

And therefore, I should be in the chair where decisions get made to upend the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of other people.

Like the other sentiment I kept coming back to watching this, and I like to, you know, to espouse more nuanced ideas than this typically on this podcast, but I'm just like, man, you don't hate these people enough.

Totally.

Yeah.

I have nothing to add.

You're smart.

So the attorney asks Nathan why he helped terminate a grant for a project examining the experiences of LGBTQ people in military service.

Man, of all the DEI grants, like this should be kind of patriotic, right?

Yeah, they're gay, but they're in the military.

Nathan had put this LGBTQ military service project grant on a list of what he called the National Endowment for Humanity's, quote, craziest grants.

Here's what Nathan said.