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Front Burner Transcript for February 6, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

[Music: Theme]

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Hi, I'm Jonathan Montpetit, in for Jayme Poisson.

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JAMIE RASKIN: We don't have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk.

BRIAN SCHATZ: You cannot wave away an agency that you don't like or that you disagree with by executive order, or by literally storming into the building and taking over the servers. That is not how the American system of government works. What I see are all the telltale signs of a coup.

WALEED SHAHID: A billionaire industrialist who donated $300 million to a campaign is installing his personal loyalists in key parts of the federal bureaucracy. This is essentially Viktor Orbán's playbook.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: That's Waleed Shahid, a political strategist from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And our guest today, describing what has been characterized by many as a power grab by the world's richest man. News broke last week that Elon Musk, head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, gained access to the U.S. government's federal payments system. That system is responsible for the flow of over $6 trillion in federal payments to American families and businesses each year. This level of access for a private citizen is unprecedented in American history. Musk has also led a campaign to bring the United States Agency for International Development to its knees.

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DON BEYER: Musk and his band of unelected acolytes at DOGE have locked out USAID employees from their offices, purge the agency of his nonpartisan leadership, and thrown the agency into chaos.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: It's part of a broader government takeover, which includes firing and sidelining career government employees and hiring Musk loyalists across the federal apparatus in their place. The sum of all that has led many to claim Musk is leading a coup. Waleed Shahid, coming up. Waleed, thanks so much for coming on the show.

WALEED SHAHID: Thanks for having me.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Last weekend, The New York Times publishes this story that says U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency access to the payment system of the United States government. So, like Musk now has access to data on every citizen who gets a cheque from the federal government. How big of a deal is this?

WALEED SHAHID: This is a huge deal. I have never seen anything like this in modern American history. If a billionaire who donated $300 million, who was an industrialist, and let's say a Central Asian country or Central African country did this, we would call it a coup. We would call it state capture. But in the United States, many people don't know how to refer to what's happening at a billionaire donor to a campaign, has taken control of multiple federal agencies, installed his own loyalists, started to dismantle government programs while openly boasting about it. This is one of the most brazen power grabs in American history, and I think both the media apparatus in the United States and the Democratic Party have struggled to meet with how extreme and radical of a initiative this is for Musk to essentially establish a shadow government agency, to begin to be able to access private information from American citizens and even access information that are huge conflicts of interest. I mean, Musk is a private business owner, one of the wealthiest men in the world, and now he has access to information about his competitors. He has access to government contracts, Social Security numbers. And he's he hasn't been vetted by U.S. Congress. He hasn't been given a security clearance. It is, in any other context, we would call this a coup.

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DONALD TRUMP: It's, it's something that he feels very strongly about. And I'm impressed because he's running obviously, a big company has nothing to do with this, a conflict that we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. We're trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Where we think there's a conflict or there's a problem, we won't let him go near it. But he has...

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: What is the reaction been within the Treasury Department?

WALEED SHAHID: So one of the most interesting places to look at it is the Reddit for federal government employees. And if you go on that Reddit page, it's, it's a bunch of federal government employees describing, you know, these are bureaucrats, these are civil servants. They're not, the civil service of the United States is not an ideological apparatus. And, you know, one thing that they do is cut cheques to government programs like Meals on Wheels for people who are experiencing hunger or low income people, health, health care for veterans, things like foreign aid, and even debt payments to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its debt. And in the Reddit, multiple people have been describing how this is not an Ocean's 11 operation, where there's some like, stealth CIA-type of extremely efficient government workers or people who know what they're doing. They describe this as a smash and grab. I mean, Musk has appointed several loyalists who are 19, 20, 25 years old to do his bidding. And many of these people are his former employees at SpaceX, at X, at other companies like Palantir, who have no experience in governance, no experience in policymaking or public service. All they're united by is that they were vetted by Musk himself, and they're young.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: So, you don't buy the line that Musk and Trump have given publicly that this is all about reducing the size of the federal government?

WALEED SHAHID: No, not at all. I think this is, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been very open about how they want to cut taxes for billionaires like themselves. The Trump family has been known for having conflicts of interest. You know, Elon Musk has tweeted that he aims to cut the federal budget by $1 trillion. And there's absolutely no way you could do that without reducing the United States military budget, which they have said they were not going to do, or you would have to begin to look at government health care programs, whether that's for veterans, whether that's for the elderly, or whether that's for the, the low income and poor Americans. And so, Donald Trump's first, he has said his first congressional initiative will be to reinstate the billionaire tax cut that he imposed in his first term. Elon Musk is likely looking for ways to pay for that tax cut by cutting programs for the vulnerable. You know, you can call that government efficiency if you want, but this is just naked oligarchy and plutocracy in the most explicit forms. It is not libertarian reform or good governance or government efficiency. It is corruption.

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JONATHAN MONTPETIT: When these DOGE personnel first gained access to the Treasury Department's payment system, one of the major concerns was that they were going to stop payments from going out. Now, like, they've since clarified that they only have read-only access to, to these, to these files. Does that matter, or do you think that's a distinction without a difference?

WALEED SHAHID: So, they only clarified that they had read only access after public scrutiny. Again, I think what they're trying to do is get away with as much as they can in the kind of shadows. And, you know, they tried to take over USAID on Saturday. They've since told, told people not to come to work in USAID. They are trying to get away with as much as they can in the early weeks of the administration, because that is their, that is their, they want to govern through chaos, they want to flood the zone with as much as they can, and not go through the, the congressional vehicles that are the legal ways to go about. You know, if you wanted to cut a government program or spend money or whatever, you would have to go through Congress to do that. I don't think they feel confident that they would be able to do that, because what they want to do is so unpopular with the American people. And you know, I don't, I don't think we should trust these people with their, I don't think we should trust their words. We should judge them by their actions, we should judge them by even what Musk is tweeting out loud. I don't know why even Elon Musk would need to have read-only access of millions of American Social Security information, millions of Americans' information about their health care benefits, and of, of contracts to his competitors of his private businesses.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: All right. Let's talk for a bit about USAID. This is the United States Agency for International Development. This is another one of the organizations that's in Musk's crosshairs. USAID spends billions each year on health care and pro-democracy initiatives around the world. But over the weekend, Musk said he was, quote, feeding it into the woodchipper. And now, the Trump administration has announced it is pulling most of the 10,000 USAID employees off the job. Now, USAID does have a polarizing history, but why do you think Musk went after this particular organization?

WALEED SHAHID: I think Musk is centering USAID because it is not something that most Americans understand. It's a program focused on foreign humanitarian aid, not domestic investments. And so for Musk and for Trump, the strategy is to take a government agency or in government programs that are not directly invested in the American people and to paint, paint a picture of the United States government and the United States bureaucracy of not looking out for the common American citizen, but looking out for people overseas. It's part of their strategy to attack all government, as you know, focused on wokeness, D.E.I., Foreign, foreign humanitarian aid, and forgetting the common man. But this is all a strategy for them to distract, to divide, and conquer the American people by doing essentially marketing. USAID is a fraction of the federal budget. To me, it's a red, red herring to focus on USAID. It's part of their marketing strategy to sell why Musk needs access to this, and to hide the fact that they are looking for pay for us for their for their tax cuts.

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DONALD TRUMP: Look at all the fraud that he's found in this USAID. It's a disaster. What the people radical left lunatics, the money. I'd like to see what the kickbacks are. How much money has been kicked back?

VOICE: 10, 12, 13 per cent, maybe less of the money was actually reaching the recipient and the rest was going into the overhead in the bureaucracy. This isn't my money. This is taxpayer money.

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JONATHAN MONTPETIT: There's been a steady stream of reports that along with Musk, the DOGE team includes at least one other Silicon Valley CEO, but also a bunch of these young Musk acolytes, like former interns, employees of his companies. And I've been reading these reports about these guys in their early 20s, and they have no governing experience. Like you mentioned, they're walking around, demanding answers from senior government officials, refusing to give their own names or answer any questions. What does that tell you about the kind of operation that Musk is running here?

WALEED SHAHID: The, the operation that Musk is running is a personal junta for himself. These are people who used to work for them, some barely out of college, now tasked with running key government systems. They are loyalists. They are far-right ideologues. They're people who are personally vetted by Musk for loyalty, for ideological alignment. This is this is like, you know, a high school version of what Viktor Orbán is doing in Hungary. And that's what I mean to say when, when the federal workers on Reddit are saying this isn't Ocean's 11. What they mean to say is in some ways, Musk is very weak. This is not, this is not someone who is a genius or understands government systems. This is someone who's being clumsy, who is trying to, you know, make himself the center of attention. And also that, you know, if, if Trump was strong, he and Musk would go through the congressional vehicles, congressional law, and make a case to the elected representatives of the United States for cutting government programs. But they're not going to do that because they know that that's unpopular. They know their tax cut is unpopular, and they're going to try to do as much as they can right now. This is a total disaster for the, the working and middle class Americans who did not vote to elect this man.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: And like, this campaign isn't limited to the federal payment system. It isn't limited to USAID. Like, DOGE officials have access to IT systems that the Office of Personnel Management to the General Services Administration. The Wall Street Journal is just reporting today that DOGE now has access to the payment systems that oversee Medicaid and Medicare. Like, we're talking about like a significant swath of the U.S. government here. So, like, where is this going and what do you think the end goal is?

WALEED SHAHID: In 2017, when Trump first took office, a lot of the more extreme, far-right ideologues felt that the there were too many government workers who are not willing to look the other way, that they had too many whistleblowers, that they had too many leaks to the press about things that were unconstitutional, that were unlawful, that were corrupt, that were graft. They, and so, they're trying to do as much as they can to install a loyalist government that's, in this case, personally loyal to Musk. In some ways, you could describe what's happening as Musk is effectively the head of government, while Donald Trump is, is the head of state. Donald Trump is the public face. He is the marketing, marketing wing of this government, while, while Musk is actually the, the head of the government and doing things behind the scenes to make policy, to be in charge of government spending and government cuts. But again, Elon Musk was not elected. He's clearly a billionaire looking out for his private gain, and seeking to loot as much as he can, whether it's information or public resources from, from his, his perch as a government official at this point.

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JONATHAN MONTPETIT: You know, as Canadians here, we were taught about the American system of government. And one of the things we're taught about that makes your system of government so, so famous, so to speak, is, is this division of powers. You know, that there are checks and balances. So I guess, you know, a lot of us here in Canada are kind of wondering: How is it possible for this unelected person to accrue so much power within the system of government?

WALEED SHAHID: Well, one, the far-right MAGA movement has now seized control of the presidency. They have seized control of the House. They've seized control of the Senate. They've seized control of the judiciary. And, you know, they have done that through electoral means, legal means. And at the same time, what they're now doing is plainly with, with Musk running the government through DOGE and his personal loyalists, they're beginning to do things that are likely unconstitutional and unlawful. And so, they have, there are ways in which the Democratic minority in the Senate can bring things to a halt, bring things to, freeze things, call, use their bully pulpit in the media to investigate things, call for Musk to a to go through some sort of Senate process. But it is a dark situation because the Republican Party has essentially become a cult for Donald Trump. And they do have power in all the three branches of government. And while the Senate Democrats can do certain things, they don't have the votes to actually pass or stop things. But they can do some accountability measures. But, you know, the United States government was designed to provide these checks and balances. But we have never experienced someone who is an authoritarian, who has all of his party backing him, and has all three branches of government on his side. And so, these are uncharted waters for the United States that many other countries around the world have faced. And it's a dangerous time for American working families.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: And here, it just might be worth pointing out that DOGE is not actually an official government department authorized by Congress. It's an advisory group created by an executive order. So, I guess that kind of complicates the effort to have any congressional oversight?

WALEED SHAHID: Yes. In order to create a government program such as DOGE, you would have to get it approved by Congress. But again, they're, they are doing a smash and grab. They have a shock and awe administration. They are flouting all of the conventions of U.S. lawmaking in the style of an authoritarian coup. And so, DOGE does not have the legal or lawful mechanisms to be doing what they're doing. But they're hoping that because they have the full control of all three branches of government and that they can distract the media with their marketing around government efficiency and cutting bloat. And also, you know, every day having new announcements like tariffs on Canada, tariffs on Mexico, seizing Gaza, that they hope the American public doesn't know what's going on.

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DONALD TRUMP: The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it, and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.

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JONATHAN MONTPETIT: I'd like to return for a second to your, to the characterization you made off the top that this represents a coup on the part of Elon Musk. Now, you've written, quote, that, "This coup doesn't come with a banner, no tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue, no balcony speeches, just a billionaire CEO waltzing into the Treasury, a president gutting the DOJ, and government workers locked out of their offices while a former Twitter exec resets their passwords." What would you say to people who would present a counter argument that, well, you know what? While Trump was democratically elected, after all, he does have some measure of legitimacy in, in executing his mandate.

WALEED SHAHID: He was democratically elected. But there have been many cases in world history where authoritarians have come to power through democratic means and then, completely violated democratic norms in order to seek private gain or install an authoritarian regime. And so, you know, obviously, I accept that he won the election. The thing that I will say is that Elon Musk was not elected. Elon Musk is a billionaire industrialist oligarch who donated $300 million to a campaign and now has, in return for that investment, now has access to the federal bureaucracy to do with what he apparently pleases. That is not constitutional. That's not lawful. That's not what anyone voted for. And so, I don't want to go down this path of this is normal. This is just what Trump gets to do because he won the election. It is not normal. It is not normal for a billionaire who has many conflicts of interest to have this level of access to private citizen data and access to being able to cut government programs or, and also like, share false information about many government programs. I, I know the Republican Party and Trump want to act like they have the Democratic mandate to do these things, but if they did, they would go through Congress. And they haven't done that because they know that once they do that, they're subjected to more scrutiny, more concerns from voters, and they're trying to do as much as they can in the dark.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Let me, let me read to you this quote from Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader. He told the Times, quote, "We're not going to go after every single issue. We are picking the most important fights, and laying down on the train tracks on those fights." So, Waleed, like, what do you make of that, that strategy?

WALEED SHAHID: I don't think it's going to work. It's not going to be effective. I think, I think they're overthinking this. Like, they, what Democrats need to do is get out there and communicate. We are in a war for attention. Donald Trump is trying to overload the attention of the American people by making multiple controversial announcements a day so nobody can focused on a single thing. And so, in that media environment, I think Democrats need to get out there. They don't need to wait for polls to be tested, and focus groups to be had. They just need to get out there and seize the attention of the American people by drawing scrutiny toward some of the most unpopular and likely unlawful moves that Donald Trump has been making in the in this Musk, this coup by Musk to take over the federal bureaucracy provides them an opportunity to paint a picture of the Trump regime of being one that is fundamentally concerned, not with fighting for the common man or the working man or whatever phony populism that Trump represents. But on corruption, on distracting the American people with saying the government is woke and too focused on diversity, is funding too many programs overseas, and instead focus on the fact that a billionaire is trying to use the federal government and avoid public scrutiny and congressional scrutiny.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Okay, so, given that Trump is clearly intent on testing the limits of executive power, to say the least. If you're a Democratic, what is the most effective avenue for resistance? Is it the courts? Is it Congress, or is it protest?

WALEED SHAHID: It's the Senate. I mean the Senate. There's this, the minority in the Senate does have some powers to stop business. They can ref--, the, if, if there's not a quorum on certain votes, the Senate can't vote on those things. And so, if enough Senators step away from the normal conduct of business of the U.S. Senate, that the Senate grinds to a halt. But Senate Democrats won't move unless they face constituent pressure.

[Sounds of protests]

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Now, I've seen people refer to Elon as the shadow president. This is kind of like a familiar binary when it comes to Trump. I mean, many referred to Steve Bannon during the first administration kind of the same way. And not just Trump, right? Like, you know, many, many people in the press referred to figures like Dick Cheney or even Karl Rove over the years as the, as the shadow president or the, you know, the man behind the scenes. Is the Musk-Trump relationship similar to these other examples? Or is this something different?

WALEED SHAHID: This is fundamentally extremely different than Dick Cheney and Bush or Trump's first term, and Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon and Dick Cheney were not billionaire oligarchs who had donated $300 million to the campaign and ran private businesses which received government contracts and military contracts from the government. And so, this is not just a political adviser, intellectual advisor or strategist. This is someone who has numerous conflicts of interest with the federal government. He has contracts with foreign governments, with countries around the world. He is someone who is fundamentally concerned with his own power, his own company's financial well-being. And so, I just think that is not, it is not the right parallel to draw it to Dick Cheney or Steve Bannon. It is fundamentally about a wealthy oligarch who is seeking to use the government for his own benefit. And I don't you know, as much as I don't like Dick Cheney or Steve Bannon, I don't think that is as clear with them as they didn't run multiple corporations while they were in the government.

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: Waleed Shahid, thank you so much for coming on the show.

WALEED SHAHID: Thanks so much for having me.

[Music: Theme]

JONATHAN MONTPETIT: That's all for today. I'm Jonathan Montpetit. We'll talk again tomorrow.

For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

Elon Musk's assault on government - Transcript

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