The Kekistocracy (E312)

It's been about a month since Donald Trump was sworn into office and they've already begun stripping the country of copper wiring, slashing a multitude of government agencies and attempting to facilitate large scale deregulation. This has led to some pretty absurd mistakes by the administration. Like when they fired a sizable chunk of the department of energy, only to attempt to scramble to rehire a group of nuclear safety workers only to realize that they didn’t actually have these worker’s contact information, as they no longer had access to their government email accounts. It appears that no one is at the wheel right now. You are being run by a kakistocracy, or rule by the worst, although given that the vice president and reddit billionaire shadow president both clearly have browsed 4chan too much, it seems more like a “kekistocracy” at the moment. Liv, Travis, and Jake discuss the lies that are flying out of DOGE and Elon Musk, the consequences of massive regulatory capture, the Trump admin’s plans to declassify old documents, and what r/conspiracy thinks about the new, "uncensored" version of ChatGPT. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://patreon.com/qaa SOURCES: Trump froze a bribery law that previously hit suppliers for Elon Musk’s Tesla https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/12/trump-foreign-bribery-law-elon-musk-tesla-minerals.html SSA OIG: Preventing, Detecting, and Recovering Improper Payments https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/072401.pdf No, 150 Year Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-social-security-150-year-old-benefits/ How Trump’s Firings “Paralyze” the NLRB https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/trump-nlrb-firing-musk-doge-workers-rights-labor-unions-paralyze/ Elon Musk's DOGE takes aim at agency that had plans of regulating X https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million. https://archive.is/tmWZl#selection-4583.0-4586.0 Open AI Tries To “Uncesor” ChatGPT https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/16/openai-tries-to-uncensor-chatgpt/ FBI says it has discovered new files on JFK assassination https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/11/politics/jfk-assassination-files/index.html Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assassination records after Trump order https://www.axios.com/2025/02/10/trump-jfk-assassination-records