Theodore Schleifer
speaker
55 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Theodore Schleifer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
of the bureaucracy by sort of taking a similar-ish institution that already existed and repurposing it for Musk's purposes.
There is about 40 of these people, we think, who are working for Doge. That's funny.
Yeah, but you can be working at 26 different agencies before breakfast. You know, a lot of these folks have multiple jobs simultaneously, multiple detail assignments simultaneously, and they sort of jump from, you know, DHS to, you know, the education department, depending on how the mood strikes them.
You know, I think we're focusing a lot on the kind of the kids, as we call them, even though there are like official normal Washington types who are involved in this. I don't want to overstate it. There are also a good amount of people who are involved who are sort of just Elon friends who are maybe in unofficial capacities. Various people from Musk's social network are sort of involved.
You know, Mark Andreessen has called himself an unpaid intern to Doge, the billionaire venture capitalist. You know, I think what their work is, what they're doing is pretty novel, obviously. And they're getting into lots of fights with the bureaucracy in a way that befits sort of the Silicon Valley mindset of disruption, right? That's the nice way to put it.
They are not believing that they need to go through the standard bureaucratic process of establishing a commission to investigate a task force to blah, blah, blah. They just want to go in and do it. A lot of the people involved share Musk's distaste and disdain for the status quo. I think we're seeing a lot of these people who have come in who have worked for Elon Musk in some capacity.
They're all kind of in Musk's image. And he's a, you know, he's a very, very divisive, polarizing leader. But there are people that surround Elon Musk have kind of a cultish devotion to him. And I think that we're seeing the reason these people are getting involved in Doge is because they love Elon Musk and they will do what Elon Musk tells them to do.
And that's why they followed him to Washington, D.C.
Certainly post-Citizens United, you know, there's been this ability of individuals to spend unlimited money on political campaigns and that has empowered wealthy people as opposed to wealthy corporations, which, you know, have always been very, very influential in Washington, right? I mean, they have trade groups, they have lobbyists, they...
you know, have donated money to campaigns and they still can, obviously. But the ability of private individuals, I find just such an interesting story because they're peculiar, right? They're human beings. They have their own beliefs and their ability to act on them.
And they have agency in a way that some ways corporations do not because they're risk averse and, you know, ruled by committee and, you As philanthropists and as donors and as political givers and as billionaires, these people are empowered in a way that corporations can feel kind of defanged. They can feel slow. Certainly not true of Musk's corporations, but I love the stories about the people.
Yeah, I feel like I'm tempted to offer a contrarian opinion that I just believe it's not going to blow up immediately. Look, the Dirties are clearly two larger-than-life personalities, to put it mildly. The possibilities of this blowing up need no explanation. I think the reasons why it could not blow up is... These are people who are enjoying each other's company genuinely.
You know, I think that they actually do have a good personal relationship at this point. And also there's PR reasons to not have a blow up. I think they're both enjoying the perception of access and the perception of power because both ways. I think Trump likes having power. surrounding himself with someone who knows a lot about things and is able to teach him about certain things.
Trump obviously also respects wealth and respects Elon's abilities in the business world. I find myself thinking it's going to last longer than most people do. I'll tell you that.
You bet.
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