Summary
Overview
Michael Lewis discusses his new book 'Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State,' which examines the rise and fall of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the federal civil servants who resisted its efforts to drastically cut government operations. The episode explores how DOGE's chaotic approach failed to achieve its goals, the bravery of career bureaucrats who blocked illegal actions, and the broader implications for American democracy and institutional integrity.
The Rise and Fall of DOGE
Michael Lewis explains what initially caught his attention wasn't DOGE itself, but rather the massive power grab by the Trump administration that it represented. Unlike Trump's first term where the government largely ran on autopilot, the second administration aggressively seized control of institutions they weren't supposed to touch, including the two-million-person civil service that takes an oath to the Constitution rather than the president. This represented an attack on a hard-won achievement from the late 19th century when America moved away from the spoils system to create a professional, non-partisan federal workforce.
- DOGE was part of a larger power grab by the Trump administration, seizing institutions they weren't supposed to control
- The two-million-person civil service is supposed to be non-partisan and take an oath to the Constitution, not the president
- Moving from a spoils system to professional civil service was a hard-won achievement in late 19th century America
- Trump's second administration aggressively grabbed power over the federal workforce, unlike his first term
" They grabbed the power of the purse and the thing that really caught my attention was they grabbed the federal workforce "
Elon Musk's Motivations and Management Failures
Lewis explores whether Musk shared Trump's goal of creating a loyalist federal workforce or had different motivations. Musk clearly benefited through installing a friend at NASA, which funnels government money to SpaceX, and likely wanted investigations of his companies squashed. However, his management approach at DOGE mirrored his chaotic takeover of Twitter, raising serious questions about whether he's actually a skilled manager of large existing organizations versus being primarily a promoter and salesman.
- Musk installed a friend as head of NASA, which controls space contracts that benefit SpaceX
- Musk likely wanted federal investigations of his companies to be stopped
- Musk's management of Twitter was disastrous, with the website starting to collapse
- The federal workforce has not increased in 45 years despite growing regulatory demands
" Is Elon Musk a good businessman? I think it's more like, right now. Is he someone you would trust to take over a company, an existing company, and make it better? And I'm not sure that the answer to that is clear. He screwed up Twitter. He screwed up the federal government. "
" He's a good promoter. But when I say that, not even as anything that explicit, when you see people say things like that, for example, on X, and I suppose it would be way to him now, but elsewhere, the Elon bros descend "
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