What do Michael Lewis and Kara Swisher think Doge was really for?

Michael Lewis argues Elon Musk could never have cut $2 trillion from the budget while ignoring military spending and entitlements, so the stated goal was not the real one. Kara Swisher thinks Musk wanted government data compiled across agencies, partly to help his AI efforts, and wanted the investigations into his companies shut down. Jacob Weisberg adds that Musk, like Trump, benefits from a weak federal government and widespread mistrust.

• Swisher says every agency that had been investigating Musk was hit.
• Lewis tells of a Doge recruit fired after telling Fast Company the government was less inefficient than he expected, who was later invited back to build a tax-filing app.
• Weisberg compares the strategy to Vladimir Putin's interest in sowing distrust in American politics.

▸In their words

“if they were really interested in waste, fraud, and abuse, they did a really poor job of finding it.” Michael Lewis · at 34:34 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on On with Kara Swisher (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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