Leah Fieger: So that’s actually a very good question, and it’s one that I’ve thought about for a long time. I guess if it’s not annoying, I’d like to read this quote from Scott Kupor, director of OPM and former managing partner of Andreessen Horowitz, to remind everyone where people are coming from in this current administration. He posted it on X late last month and it was part of Reuters reporting. So he posts, “The truth is, DOGE may no longer have centralized leadership under USDS, but the principles of DOGE remain alive and well, deregulation, eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, reshaping the federal workforce, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” Which is exactly the same thing they’ve been saying the whole time, but it’s all smoke and mirrors, right? It’s like, oh no, no, well, DOGE doesn’t really exist anymore. There is no Elon Musk character leading it, which Elon Musk himself also said on a podcast with Joe Rogan last month. He’s like, “Yeah, once I left, they weren’t able to pick anyone, but don’t worry, DOGE is still there.” So it’s strange to see people falling into this trap and saying, “DOGE is gone now.” And I feel like, they’re really telling us that’s not the case.
Zoe Schiffer: I think one thing that honestly rings true is that it’s harder and harder to distinguish where DOGE stops and where the Trump administration starts because they’ve infiltrated so many different parts of the government and the DOGE ethos, you’re talking about, deregulation, cost cutting, zero-based budgeting, they’ve really become kind of table stakes for the administration, right?
Leah Fieger: I think this is a very good thing. And to be honest, by the end of Elon Musk’s reign, what kept coming out was that the Trump administration didn’t necessarily agree with the ethos of DOGE at all. It was that they didn’t really agree with what Musk was doing about it. They didn’t like that he was stepping on Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and fighting outside the Oval Office. This was a bad approach and it also doesn’t help the Trump administration show that they are on top of this.
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