# Can Elon Musk Cut Two Trillion Dollars From the US Budget?

An episode of [Patrick Boyle On Finance](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1547740313), 25 Nov 2024, 28 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1188379255.mp3

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading up Donald Trump's newly created Department of Government Efficiency which plans to take aim at wasteful government spending. On the campaign Elon Musk claimed that he could cut two trillion dollars in government spending. What would those cuts look like and how likely is Elon Musk to succeed? Does Elon Musk have too many conflicts of interest to do this job? Subscribe to Patrick's interview channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PBoyleInterviews Patrick's Books: Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Ways To Support The Channel Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle Additional Reading: Jetson Leder-Luis Website: https://sites.bu.edu/jetson/ False Claims Act Reporting: https://www.justice.gov/civil/report-fraud The Economist: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/11/20/governments-are-not-going-to-stop-getting-bigger Reid Hoffman in The FT: https://www.ft.com/content/a3a329ee-8c9a-4abd-add2-eb7d56f4c108 Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle Business Inquiries ➡️ sponsors@onfinance.org

## Transcript

[0:06] All right. But we set up doge, yes?
[0:10] How much do you think we can RIP out of this wasted $6.5 trillion
[0:17] Harris Biden budget? Well, I I think we we can do at
[0:21] least 2 trillion. Yeah, yes, 2 trillion.
[0:26] When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he immediately slashed
[0:31] costs, getting rid of anything he saw as wasteful or
[0:35] unnecessary, famously posting a photo of himself getting rid of
[0:39] the plumbing fixtures on his first day in the office.
[0:42] Now he's been appointed by Donald Trump to cut spending and
[0:46] improve efficiency for the US government.
[0:48] Musk, along with pharma entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswami,
[0:53] has been put in charge of what is being described as a new
[0:56] government department which is supposed to work with government
[1:00] employees to reduce spending and unnecessary regulation.
[1:04] I think the finest name is is DOG the the Doge Department of
[1:07] Government efficiency. The Department of Government
[1:10] Efficiency, whose joke name DOGE is a nod to a Musk endorsed
[1:13] cryptocurrency, is not a real government department, as only
[1:18] Congress establish new government departments or
[1:21] agencies. So DOGE is probably better
[1:24] thought of as a think tank that does analysis, which is then
[1:28] pitched to the government. The government can then decide
[1:31] whether to follow their recommendations or not.
[1:34] While Doge may not have any legal authority, at least today
[1:39] Elon Musk does have the ear of the incoming president after his
[1:43] super PAC spent an estimated $200 million on campaigning for
[1:47] Trump, with Musk turning up in person at multiple campaign
[1:51] events. Most importantly, Trump appears
[1:55] to be taking Musk's pledge to cut costs seriously, having
[1:59] referred to DOGE as the Manhattan Project of our time, a
[2:03] reference to the project to develop develop an atomic bomb
[2:06] during the Second World War. Now, rooting out fraud, reducing
[2:10] government waste, and increasing efficiency is something that
[2:14] should appeal to all sides of the political spectrum.
[2:18] If you're a believer in small government, the appeal is fairly
[2:21] obvious. But socialists would also want
[2:24] to see government waste and fraud being eliminated, as lower
[2:27] waste would mean more effective government programs where the
[2:31] spending is more efficiently reaching the people it's in
[2:34] intended for. For years, the nonpartisan
[2:38] Congressional Budget Office has been warning that U.S.
[2:41] National debt is on an unsustainable trajectory.
[2:45] And I think it's fair to say that there's a consensus that
[2:49] too much debt is a terrible idea, especially if the
[2:53] country's growth doesn't deliver.
[2:55] The problem of growing government spending is not just
[2:58] an American issue. Government spending as a
[3:01] percentage of GDP in all OECD countries has grown consistently
[3:06] over time. According to The Economist, the
[3:09] tendency for government to grow has been a hallmark of
[3:13] modernity. They showed that from 1274 to
[3:16] 1691, the English government raised less than 2% of GDP in
[3:21] taxes. Over the 18th and 19th
[3:24] centuries, Spending, especially during times of war, grew.
[3:29] By the 1870's the governments of rich countries were spending
[3:33] about 10% of GDP. By 1920 this had grown to around
[3:38] 20%. Government spending continued to
[3:41] grow, for today most developed countries governments are
[3:45] spending between 40 and 60% of GDP.
[3:49] It doesn't seem that this could grow a whole lot more.
[3:53] While many left-leaning viewers might argue that this level of
[3:56] spending is fine and America just needs to hike taxes on the
[4:00] rich, they'll often argue that there were marginal tax rates as
[4:05] high as 90% in the early 1950s. It might surprise them, though,
[4:10] that just because marginal tax rates were higher didn't mean
[4:14] that the government collected more tax as a percentage of GDP.
[4:19] Burton McHale showed in a recent FT article that while tax policy
[4:23] has varied wildly over the decades outside of recessions,
[4:28] federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have been
[4:31] remarkably steady at around 17 1/2 percent of GDP over the last
[4:36] 75 years. Citizens simply defer taxes when
[4:41] rates are high or reduce the amount of work that they do and
[4:45] have been more willing to pay taxes when rates were lower.
[4:49] So what does the US government spend money on?
[4:52] And will DOGE be able to slash government spending the way Elon
[4:56] Musk did at Twitter? Elon Musk posted a call for CVS
[5:00] on Twitter last week saying that he doesn't need ideas, he needs
[5:05] super high IQ small government revolutionaries willing to work
[5:09] 80 plus hours per week on unglamorous cost cutting.
[5:14] There were, of course, thousands of replies, including one from
[5:18] Razzlecon, who's widely considered one of the greatest
[5:21] and most influential rappers of all time, saying that she would
[5:25] like to share some actionable solutions to curtail fraud and
[5:30] cybercrime. Unfortunately, she's unlikely to
[5:33] be able to take up a role within Doge, as she's currently serving
[5:38] time for fraud and cybercrime. A few people have, of course,
[5:44] pointed out the irony of starting a new government
[5:47] department to deal with waste when 1 already exists.
[5:51] The Government Accountability Office exists to determine
[5:55] whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and
[5:58] effectively. It's there to investigate
[6:01] allegations of illegal or improper activities and to
[6:04] report on how well government programs and policies are
[6:08] meeting their objectives. So basically the same thing as
[6:12] DOGE but without without the silly name.
[6:14] It has additionally been pointed out that the new department
[6:18] having 2 heads is possibly wasteful too.
[6:22] Now this is not the first time that a president has formed the
[6:25] task force to improve government efficiency and cut spending.
[6:29] In 19 O 5, Theodore Roosevelt's Committee on Department Methods,
[6:34] which was known as the Keep Commission.
[6:37] I think that was some sort of mean coin at the time.
[6:40] Was given a a similar task of investing, instigating salaries,
[6:44] purchasing, accounting and so on to reform the administration of
[6:48] the executive branch. In 1984, Ronald Reagan formed
[6:53] the Grace Commission, headed by the industrialist J Peter Grace,
[6:57] to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the federal
[7:00] government. Grace instructed his employees
[7:04] to leave no stone unturned in their search to root out
[7:07] inefficiency. When submitted, the report said
[7:11] that 1/3 of all income taxes are consumed by waste and
[7:16] inefficiency in the federal government, and it warned that
[7:19] if it's recommendations were ignored that national debt could
[7:23] hit $13 trillion by the year 2000.
[7:27] In 1996, Bill Clinton announced in his State of the Union
[7:32] address that the era of big government was over and promised
[7:36] to put welfare recipients to work.
[7:39] The chart on screen right now shows 100 years of U.S.
[7:43] government spending as a percentage of GDP.
[7:46] The blue line is non defense spending and the red line is
[7:50] interest on debt. You can see a big step up in non
[7:54] defense spending in the 1930s due to FD OS New Deal programs
[7:59] which we discussed in last week's video.
[8:02] A huge spike in defense spending for the Second World War.
[8:06] Non defense spending grew steadily as a percentage of GDP
[8:10] over time with a big increase in the last 25 years.
[8:15] First, because of 9/11, again due to the credit crunch and a
[8:19] huge spike in 2020 when the pandemic struck, always seeming
[8:24] to reset at a new level, higher than ever before.
[8:28] Growth in government spending usually is tied to growth in
[8:32] what governments do. According to an analysis by
[8:36] Quant Gov, the number of federal regulations has more than
[8:40] doubled since 1970. The Economist reports that the
[8:44] total word count on Germany's laws is 60% higher today than it
[8:49] was in the mid 1990s. They point out that in many ways
[8:54] governments interfere less than they did in the past when many
[8:58] imposed currency controls and owned steel mills, mines and
[9:01] telecom networks. In fact, by the late 1970s,
[9:06] almost a third of British families lived in government
[9:09] owned housing. While governments take less
[9:12] control of the economy today, in other areas governments have
[9:16] more power than ever before. It can be difficult to build
[9:20] nowadays due to environmental and conservation rules.
[9:24] Employers have to meet more health and safety rules than
[9:27] ever before too. And the share of U.S. jobs
[9:30] requiring an occupational license increased from 5% in the
[9:35] 1950s to 25% today. It used to just be lawyers and
[9:40] doctors that were or licensed, but today you often need a
[9:43] license to cut hair, be an auctioneer or even work as a
[9:47] make up artist. the US government requires that
[9:51] gasoline be 10% ethanol today due to lobbying from the corn
[9:55] industry. And in the UK, the police are
[9:58] monitoring social media for non crime hate issues, something
[10:02] that was unthinkable in the past.
[10:05] One of the ways that spending can grow is when mission creep
[10:09] occurs at government agencies. Since the credit crunch, the
[10:13] Federal Reserve has expanded its objectives beyond monetary
[10:17] policy, now directly allocating credit, incorporating inequality
[10:22] considerations into its employment goals, and examining
[10:26] climate risk as part of its analysis of banks.
[10:30] In many countries, voters prefer big government, lots of
[10:34] regulation and high taxes. Some governments are passing
[10:38] regulations requiring people to switch to electric cars.
[10:41] In others, due to low birth rates, governments are even
[10:45] paying people to have children. One of the ways to cut
[10:49] government spending, then, is to cut regulation, as there's a
[10:52] cost associated with monitoring whether all of the new rules are
[10:57] being followed or not. It seems that the Trump
[10:59] administration is likely to cut unnecessary regulations and
[11:04] continue. It's one in, two out approach
[11:07] where if a new regulation is going to be passed, 2 existing
[11:11] regulations must be eliminated first.
[11:13] Such a process could make business easier in the United
[11:17] States over time and help to reduce government spending.
[11:21] Doge won't just see resistance to spending cuts from the people
[11:26] who benefit from government programs.
[11:28] They'll likely see resistance from politicians on both the
[11:31] right and left, too. Politicians have their own
[11:35] incentives to expand the state, as they often introduce new
[11:39] programs to buy votes in their districts.
[11:42] The costs of new spending are spread across all taxpayers,
[11:46] while benefits are concentrated amongst special interest groups
[11:50] or certain voter demographics that will reelect the politician
[11:54] who introduced the program. For this reason, Doge can expect
[11:58] to see a lot of political pushback.
[12:02] So will Elon Musk be able to quickly slash $2 trillion of
[12:06] government spending like he promised?
[12:08] Can he do what he did at Twitter and just fire 80% of government
[12:13] workers? Well, it might not be quite that
[12:16] easy. Only 8% of U.S. government
[12:19] spending goes on employee compensation, and that's in fact
[12:24] amongst the lowest percentage in the developed world.
[12:27] So where does all of the money go then?
[12:30] Well, most of the money in the federal budget is spent on
[12:33] Social Security at almost 1 1/2 trillion dollars.
[12:37] Then interest on the national debt at almost $900 billion.
[12:42] There's Medicare at $874 billion, unemployment benefit
[12:47] and food stamps at $448 billion, veterans benefits at $325
[12:54] billion, and federal employee pensions at $197 billion.
[13:00] I'm not sure that Musk could cut much of that spending, as Trump
[13:04] has vowed publicly not to touch any of these programs.
[13:08] He even campaigned on making Social Security more generous by
[13:13] removing the income tax on it. This spending is all classified
[13:17] as mandatory spending anyhow, meaning that these payments are
[13:21] required by existing laws, so they would be very difficult to
[13:26] cut. Mandatory spending sums up to
[13:29] 4.4 trillion trillion dollars, or 65% of all federal spending.
[13:35] That leaves $2.3 trillion of spending, most of which would
[13:40] need to be cut to 0 in order to hit Musk's $2 trillion target.
[13:45] There's no reason to believe he just made-up that number on the
[13:48] spot either, as if he was making up numbers it would have been
[13:52] $420 trillion. Well, I I think we we can do at
[13:56] least 2 trillion, yeah. Yes, 2 trillion.
[14:02] Discretionary spending is not permanently enshrined in law and
[14:07] instead has to be voted on every year by US lawmakers.
[14:11] This part of the budget includes defense at $874 billion,
[14:16] transportation at $137 billion, and education, training,
[14:21] employment, and social services, which combined come to a bid
[14:25] over $300 billion. While cutting all of these
[14:29] departments might hit Musk's $2 trillion target, slashing these
[14:34] to zero could cause some problems.
[14:37] The Department of Transportation, amongst other
[14:40] things, builds, repairs and inspects roads and bridges, some
[14:44] of which are already crumbling. According to the American
[14:48] Society of Civil Engineers, 230 million Americans regularly
[14:53] travel on structurally deficient roads and bridges. 15 to 20
[14:58] million Americans drink water contaminated with lead, which
[15:02] the EPA is in charge of cleaning up.
[15:05] The Department of Energy, amongst other things, manages
[15:08] America's nuclear infrastructure, not just the
[15:11] power plants, but also the country's nuclear weapons
[15:14] arsenal and the safe storage of nuclear waste.
[15:18] Well, I'm sure efficiencies can be found in these departments
[15:22] and others. They'll be found by careful
[15:24] analysis. You can't just shut them down
[15:27] like the servers at the 13 most popular social network where the
[15:31] worst possible outcome is that your website stops working until
[15:36] you plug the server back in again.
[15:38] People's lives and the prosperity of the country can be
[15:41] put at risk if cost cutting is done in a sloppy manner.
[15:45] Now on the topic of defence, as that made-up the biggest chunk
[15:49] of discretionary spending, in theory, Trump is an
[15:53] isolationist, or at least he was during his first term in office,
[15:57] but even then there weren't many cuts in the defence budget and
[16:02] he did create the Space Force at the cost of $738 billion.
[16:07] Additionally, Trump said when campaigning that he would build
[16:11] an Iron Dome missile defence shield around America, which
[16:15] would be difficult to do while slashing defense spending.
[16:19] The defense budget is around $800 billion, so we just have 1
[16:24] 1/2 trillion dollars left. Meaning that Musk would need to
[16:27] shut down hundreds of agencies. Things like the Department of
[16:31] Education, the Department of Transportation, the Justice
[16:34] Department, Natural Resources and the Environment, and general
[16:39] science, space and technology. I'll tell you right now that if
[16:43] it was me, I'd cut space spending right away because I've
[16:47] heard that they've been paying a guy billions of dollars to
[16:50] launch rockets into the Indian Ocean that can barely carry a
[16:54] banana on board. It's 55 years since we sent a
[16:58] man to the moon, and this guy's wasting taxpayer money on
[17:02] catching rocket boosters, which I can't imagine was specified in
[17:07] the original government contract.
[17:09] He's talking about sending men to Mars when the technology to
[17:13] do this has existed for years. Not the technology to keep them
[17:17] alive once they get there. Obviously, but he doesn't seem
[17:21] to be working on that. Oh wait, I just remembered who
[17:25] that guy is. Elon won't cut that spending,
[17:29] will he? Maybe Vivek can deal with that
[17:31] one. Since his appointment, Musk has
[17:35] mostly tweeted about individual incidents of wasteful spending
[17:39] without any discussion as to how to tackle the biggest line items
[17:43] on the budget. One of the legitimate worries
[17:46] about Trump putting Musk in a government oversight role like
[17:50] this is that he might be setting the fox amongst the chickens.
[17:53] According to the New York Times, Musk's companies were promised
[17:58] $3 billion across nearly 100 different government contracts
[18:02] last last year alone, facing 17 different federal agencies.
[18:07] According to The Economist, 10% of Musks personal fortune is
[18:12] derived from contracts and freebies from the US government.
[18:16] His new role and his political connections could allow him to
[18:20] meddle with regulations, tariffs and procurement programs,
[18:24] advantaging his companies and harming his competitors in the
[18:28] automobile industry, the aerospace industry, AI, and even
[18:33] in the dog themed cryptocurrency space.
[18:36] His former business partner even wrote an article in the FT
[18:41] yesterday warning about this issue.
[18:44] Over the last month, Musk's businesses have soared in value,
[18:49] far outperforming the stock market for no reason other than
[18:53] that investors are betting that Musk will be able to extract
[18:57] value from his new found political access.
[19:00] Tesla went from being the worst performing stock in the S&P 500
[19:04] earlier this year due to declining growth to
[19:07] outperforming the index once the election results were announced.
[19:12] Musk and his companies are currently facing as many as 20
[19:16] different federal investigations over things like illegal
[19:19] disclosures when he purchased Twitter, the safety of his self
[19:23] driving cars, environmental damage at his factories, OSHA
[19:27] violations, and the list goes on.
[19:30] While he might not be able to stop these investigations in
[19:33] their tracks, he may well be able to recommend budget cuts at
[19:37] the very federal agencies regulating and investigating
[19:41] him, or at least threaten them with that.
[19:45] Musk has a significant portion of his wealth tied up in China,
[19:49] where half of his cars are built at his most profitable, if not
[19:53] only profitable factory. This makes him an obvious target
[19:57] for manipulation by the Chinese government, who could bankrupt
[20:01] him by shutting down his Shanghai factory.
[20:04] This is cause for concern with him being a military contractor.
[20:08] He could be coerced into cutting Internet access in a war zone
[20:12] and is extremely worrying worried to have.
[20:15] Greater government access, which it looks like he will have.
[20:18] Many have questioned if Musk should have any U.S. government
[20:22] security clearance at all as the conflicts of interest are
[20:26] obvious and extreme and this was before he gained political
[20:30] access. So can we expect Doge to be
[20:34] successful? Well both Trump and Musk do want
[20:38] to disrupt the federal government and Trump does have a
[20:41] mandate to do so. Having were not just the
[20:44] election but the popular vote too.
[20:46] With ever growing government spending, a budget deficit of 6%
[20:50] of GDP and growing national debt, some sort of reform is
[20:55] definitely needed. There are already over 90,000
[20:59] pages of federal regulations in place, and several thousand new
[21:03] rules are issued by federal agencies each year.
[21:07] Each new regulation, as I mentioned earlier, usually
[21:10] requires a budget so that it can be enforced and monitored, and
[21:14] for this reason, government budgets grow and grow.
[21:18] Ronald Reagan, working with the Grace Commission, enacted major
[21:22] spending cuts seven months into his first year in power that
[21:26] totaled $131 billion over the next three years.
[21:31] Margaret Thatcher started an efficiency unit in 1979 to audit
[21:36] government waste, which was headed up by Sir Derek Rayner,
[21:39] the CEO of the retail chain Marks and Spencer's.
[21:43] Rayner had already done similar work for Prime Minister Edward
[21:47] Heath, where he arranged for the three British military services
[21:52] to use a single procurement office, achieving significant
[21:55] cost savings. His efficiency unit under
[21:58] Thatcher led to headcount reduction options in the civil
[22:01] service and overall savings of £170 million per year over the
[22:07] next three years. In 1996, Sweden reformed its
[22:11] budget process to tackle it's high deficit, after which it's
[22:16] government debt fell from 84% of GDP to 45% by 2008.
[22:23] Ruth Richardson in New Zealand severely cut government spending
[22:27] in 1991, including spending on welfare.
[22:31] She called her plan the mother of all budgets, and while it was
[22:35] extremely unpopular with voters at the time who called it
[22:39] Ruthenasia, 20 years later state spending in New Zealand was
[22:44] still 6 percentage points lower as a share of GDP than it was
[22:48] when she first took office. These examples show that serious
[22:53] analysis often done by outside business people can lead to
[22:57] government spending reform that works.
[23:00] As we saw when going through the budget, America won't be able to
[23:04] fix its finances without tackling the two largest
[23:07] programs, which are Social Security and Medicare, which
[23:11] consume 1/3 of the US budget. The Penn Wharton Budget Model
[23:17] shows the delaying eligibility to the age of 67 from 65 today
[23:22] on both of these these programs would reduce the government's
[23:25] obligations by $100 billion per year.
[23:28] Now, cuts like this would not be popular as many Americans are
[23:32] counting on these programs and wouldn't be excited about being
[23:36] asked to work two extra years. People my age were pretty much
[23:40] told from the day that we started contributing to Social
[23:44] Security that it would go bankrupt before we retired.
[23:47] So my age group may not be expecting much out of these
[23:51] programs anyway. There's no way that Musk can
[23:54] make the kind of cuts that he's talking about without going
[23:58] after the most expensive programs.
[24:01] Musk warned the crowd at a Trump campaign rally two weeks ago to
[24:05] brace for economic hardship, saying your suffering is
[24:09] necessary because it will ensure long term prosperity.
[24:14] Now it seems a little tone deaf to me how excited the world's
[24:18] richest man appeared to be about promising hard times and
[24:22] stripping job security and retirement benefits from working
[24:25] class Americans, even posting memes of himself firing people
[24:30] on his Twitter account. But I think I'm in a minority
[24:33] and people do seem to love him. Social Security and Medicare
[24:37] cuts would not be popular with older Americans, and older
[24:41] Americans do go out and vote. Well.
[24:44] This is Trump's last term and he doesn't need to worry about re
[24:48] election. Republicans in the House and
[24:50] Senate might be less willing to alienate voters.
[24:54] A government proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64
[24:59] in France last year led to strikes, protests and riots.
[25:04] But then again, almost anything can lead to strikes, protests
[25:07] and riots in France. I think rioting is actually
[25:11] their national sport. There was a really good episode
[25:14] of the Odd Lots podcast that I listened to a few days ago when
[25:18] they interviewed Jetson leader Lewis from Boston University,
[25:23] who's written multiple papers on fraud, misreporting, and
[25:26] overbilling in public expenditures, particularly in
[25:30] the Medicare program. He went through how government
[25:33] fraud works and how it can be detected using statistical
[25:37] analysis. I'll put a link to both the
[25:39] podcast episode and his website in the description.
[25:43] His research shows how someone with a background in tech like
[25:47] Elon Musk has could dig out fraudulent billing.
[25:50] He explained that there's actually a great whistle blower
[25:54] program already in place called the False Claims Act, where if
[25:58] you know about a company or person who's defrauding any
[26:02] public program, you can hire an attorney.
[26:04] And there are legal firms who specialized in this type of
[26:07] claim and sue that person or company in court and as the
[26:12] whistle blower get a share of the money that's returned back
[26:15] to the government. He explained that this is a
[26:18] super effective program which is cheap to run as every hospital
[26:22] employee or employed a government contractor who spots
[26:26] government fraud taking place can report it and earn sometimes
[26:30] massive rewards. Jetson argues that in order to
[26:34] further cut fraud in government, the government needs to hire
[26:38] more lawyers and pay them better as at present they have more
[26:42] fraud cases than they've time to pursue so they just go after the
[26:46] easy ones. Adding more good lawyers would
[26:49] be positive NPV, as not only do they claim back more money than
[26:53] they're paid, but when people see frauds being convicted,
[26:57] there's a strong deterrent effect.
[27:00] Musk has been a near constant presence in Trump's orbit since
[27:04] the election, giving his opinion on who should be hired and what
[27:08] the new government should do. Musk and Trump appear to get on
[27:12] really well too, but in the last Trump presidency there was a lot
[27:16] of churn in the inner circle and Trump was very quick to get rid
[27:20] of people if they embarrassed or annoyed him.
[27:23] So we can't be sure how long this friendship will last.
[27:26] It could all end in a week or continue for Trump's full term
[27:30] in all office. I can't help but wonder if Trump
[27:33] is already deliberately torturing Elon Musk, as I can
[27:37] think of few things more miserable than the idea of being
[27:40] around Vivek Ramaswamy all day long.
[27:43] Anyhow, as a final note for those of you who made it to the
[27:46] end of the video, I'm launching a second YouTube channel called
[27:50] Patrick Boyle Interviews that I'll link to in the video
[27:54] description, where I'll shortly start posting long form
[27:57] interviews with the most interesting people I know.
[28:00] Do subscribe to that Channel if you'd like to see that kind of
[28:04] content. The first video will be coming
[28:06] out soon. Thanks for tuning into this
[28:08] week's podcast, which is funded by my supporters on Patreon.
[28:13] If you want to to sign up to support the channel, I'll put a
[28:16] link in the show notes. Have a great week and talk to
[28:19] you again soon. Bye.

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