What Is DOGE’s Real Goal?
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio
Mm. From New York Times opinion. This is the Ezra Klein show. Mm.
When Doge was first announced. after Donald Trump won the election. I knew a lot of people who thought it was a way to get Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy out of the Trump administration's hair. It's an old tradition in Washington. You have people who help you in the election, help you in the campaign, but you don't want them in the White House so you give them a blue ribbon commission somewhere where you'll never hear from them again. Not how it worked out.
The first person Doge purged was Vivek Ramaswamy. It became Elon Musk's operation. But in becoming Elon Musk's operation, it became central to how Donald Trump is trying to and actually remaking. the federal government. But I gotta tell you, I hate the name Doge.
We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (71 minutes, 13,287 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.
No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.