Michael Lewis: "Blockers"

0:00Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all exhilarating. At Accura, that means looking closely at how every detail could make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding. Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision crafted performance. That's Accura. You're so cajon to deal with, are honored to help the community. Our program started the first deafened heart of hearing football team of its kind in our league. The helpful SoCal Honda dealer surprised us with brand new uniforms giving our athletes more than just jerseys, a community investing in their program. And we want to help you too, with 1.99% APR on a 2026 Rigeline for well-qualified buyers. At your SoCal Honda dealers, made their contract limited must finance who are Honda financial services. Now, our buyers will qualify to take delivery by 11226. Hi, it's Michael Smirconish. Welcome to Book Club with Michael Smirconish. A collection of Michael's favorite interviews with authors from the last 30 years through today on the air on radio.

1:05What sets my book club apart is that I actually read the books. Book Club is now in session. Listen to this list. It's a phenomenal list. Liars Poker, the money culture, Pacific Rift losers, the new new thing next money ball coach, the blind side home game, the big short boomerang flash boys, the undoing project, the fifth risk, the premonition going infinite. Who is government and now blockers all books by Michael Lewis. And he joins me now. Michael, thank you for coming back to the program. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed the book. Thanks so much. There was a line. I'll date myself, but there was a line, as I recall it, being delivered in butchacity in the Sundance kid where, I don't know, Newman looks at Redford or Redford looks at Newman and he says, who are those guys? And as Doge was unfolding, I wondered who are those guys?

2:08You described them as a rattle bag. Love that word of friends, employees, and hangers on of Elon Musk. You say that they were about 100 strong, but only 15 were key. They got on the signal chat and they made it to the sixth floor of the GSA. What went down on the sixth floor of the GSA? Where they collected the scalps that they'd scalped that day. I mean, it was the sixth floor of the GSA was mostly the younger Doge people with Elon Musk. It was interesting. There were older seemingly responsible suits who showed up. Mainly people who were associated with Musk companies. But the people who were actually doing a lot of the damage, firing people, cutting government contracts were young men between the ages of 19 and about 28. And they bumped in the GSA by night and by day they went out into the agencies and tried to generate what Elon Musk wanted, which was kind of cuts.

3:12And it was the way they did it, which was so extraordinary. It was like, I mean, it's a little hard. I mean, I think people just can't get their minds around it. 26-year-old who knows nothing about, say, the Department of Veterans Administration going in. I mean, nothing. Like, and going in and just insisting on like randomly cutting contracts. 26-year-olds who knows nothing about the Internal Revenue Service going in saying, I know there's a lot of waste fraud and abuse here. I'm here to find it and start demanding like access to information he should not see. And it was so that those guys were Musk disciples who kind of believed his stick that the government was always fraud and abuse. And that really, and his and his must-semo when he takes over companies, always been like, do a lot of damage. And if you do too much damage, you can kind of fix it afterwards. They took that approach to the federal government.

4:14And it's not Project 2025 stuff, right? It's not as if Heritage Foundation or some other conservative think tank has a roadmap. They've yearned for the day when they have the keys to the kingdom. And they know what they want to do when they get in there. But instead, the picture that you paint in blockers is that it's just a shit show. And they have no idea what they're doing. It's a shit show on top of a shit show because it was Project 20. There was more than one thing coming in on the federal government than the civil service than Doge and Project 2025 was very much present. And there was a bit of overlap between Doge and Doge. Some of the things Doge did, you could find in the pages of 2025. But even the Project 2025 people would have told you and it did tell me. Like some of the things they're doing is just insane. Like we would not have recommended that. So give you an example. Everybody sort of agreed. I mean, even people on the left sort of agreed that it was too hard to fire federal employees. Like 99.0 something percent of federal employees get a stamp of approval at the end of every

5:19year saying they did a good job. It's just implausible. And there is in every department, you know, a department of broken children, a room filled with broken toys, people who were not doing very much. There is dead wood. You know, there's things to do. But instead of looking for that, instead of going in and looking for who was valuable and who was not, they came in and they saw that it was quite difficult legally to just fire civil service. However, there was a pool of people called probationary employees who were, who people who had been there for 18 months or less. You don't get the protections of the civil service until you kind of prove that you can be useful. And then you can fire those people pretty much it will. And who are those people? The people who were hired in the last 18 months. They're the young people who you're kind of desperate to have. They are people who have been hired to deal with some immediate problem. So like they're really relevant people. And they're people who have moved within the government because they're seeking some

6:22other challenge. And so kind of exactly who you didn't want to fire. And they fired them on mass. It was a kind of, it's very interesting, but you'd actually deal with this problem of how to, how to clean up the federal government. But when you go in and you go in the way they did, what you discover inadvertently is it's really easy to get rid of the best people and really hard to get rid of the people you want to get rid of. So because the other thing they did is they put all kinds of pressure and some of it very unpleasant on the existing civil service to take early retirement. Who is going to do that? Who's going to be forced out the most, most easily? People who have options in the private sector. And so you ended up, you ended up basically doing the opposite of what they intended to do. And I think, you know, the great question, just to back away from this, the great question in my mind is, is whether what they said they were doing was really what they were doing.

7:26Like what Elon Musk said he was doing, if you remember, is he was going to cut $2 trillion out of the federal deficit. But he never went after, three quarters of the federal deficit. Never went after interest payments on the debt or entitlements on the military. So he was never going to actually be able to do that. What they ended up doing was cutting a few, maybe a few billion dollars, but at the cost of more billion dollars, they ended up costing the taxpayer, did nothing to the deficit, the deficit expanded since Doge arrived on the scene. But maybe that's not what they were really trying to do. Maybe what they were really trying to do is just create chaos. And in the name of something else, and that was what was going on at the same time that Doge was creating all this noise and attracting all this attention, was a pretty radical seizure of power by the executive. A federal seizure power by Trump. The firing of all the inspectors generals across the government who are independent watchdogs who are there to precisely to identify and prosecute waste fraud and abuse.

8:30There are a lot of independent like referees in the system who referee the disputes between the civil service and the politicals. Those were either neutered or fired. The seizure of independent agencies like the Institute of Peace or I mean like the Smithsonian or the Kennedy Center, all the stuff that typically the president doesn't control that they just sought to control and stick Trump's name on. All that stuff is going on at the same time. The Doge is creating its chaos. And I wonder if Doge just wasn't in the minds of the real architects, just a distraction. So that- This is not a case you make in the book. I'm floored by this. It's phenomenal to think about it. Not telling me you think maybe Doge was the ultimate shiny object. We were all focused on Doge. Who are the guys looking like they dressed like Steve Jobs and what are their qualifications and we're not looking somewhere else? Yeah, so I don't really make any case in the book. It's a series of- it's a story, but it falls. This falls right out of the story.

9:30But yes, yes. It's sort of like if you are- who is the architect of Trump's approach- Trump is in the architect. Who's the architect? Trump's approach to the federal government. It's Russell Vogue. Russell Vogue was one of the co-authors of Project 2025, but he wasn't the main architect of Project 2025. But Russell Vogue has very clear ideas of what he wanted to do with the executive branch. And I think what happened is Elon Musk rolled in. It was kind of a happy accident for him. You couldn't see it coming, but it happened. And he actually said- I think he said to his staff, like the tornado is going to come in and do its damage and we're going to be there when it's over. And the damage was kind of- it wasn't like micro-managed by Russell Vogue. It wasn't manageable at all. But he saw that the damage was basically moving everything in a direction he approved of. And it was the ultimate- as you put it, the ultimate shiny object. It completely distracted people from the real thing that was going on, which was a seizure

10:32of power. And the whole book is about that, right? The whole book is- the whole book is like your government just changed. Your government just ceased to be two million people who were nonpartisan civil servants who took an oath to the Constitution, who have been turned into- or are trying to be turned into- two million people who served the personal interests of Donald Trump and need to be loyalists. And when you do that to that workforce, you change all the incentives in the workforce and you change the way we're going to govern ourselves. You change the way each function of government functions. That's the story of the book. So I think that is Doge when people bothered me because the first piece of the book is about Doge. The book- rather than me that the quick read was this was a book about Doge because it's not what about Doge. Doge is just the appetizer. So the book is called Blockers. Michael Lewis, the best-selling author, is the author of this book. This is Book Club with Michael's Mourchanish from Sirius XM. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents.

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12:36And now, insurance options may be available nationwide with average copays of just $23 per session for eligible members. Better help works with more than 125 health plans, making it easy to get started with low-cost sessions. Don't have eligible insurance. Get 10% off your first month, and learn how therapy can help you manage stress at betterhelp.com. Cost and coverage may vary. Discount cannot be combined with insurance. So the book is called Blockers. Michael Lewis, the best-selling author, is the author of this book. The term as he uses it comes from people who are perceived to be impediments to what the Trump administration wants to do in the early days of Trump 2.0. And at its core, it's a book that focuses on six very talented individuals. You'd want working in your government at some level. I don't know Michael in your media tour, which of the six personalities have most interested

13:41your questioners so far. But I ISOed on one of the six and was hoping you'd say a word about Alex Marin Sheetis. How do I pronounce the last name? Marin Alex Marin Gideys. So I found this to be really interesting because of how the story comes full circle to Howard Lutnik and personal tragedy from September 11. Help me explain this to the audience. Alex Marin Gideys has invented inside the government, an organization called NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is inside the Department of Commerce, which is run by Howard Lutnik. He's invented a fire science. And it's a science of wild land, urban interface fires, as opposed to indoor fires or pure wildfires. He has studied and he's assembled a body of knowledge, created a body of knowledge, and how we could best defend our communities, how to best plan escape routes. The fires that we're all talking about are the fires that he is expert in.

14:43But before he did that, before he kind of earned the right to do that, by doing for NIST, the study of how the World Trade Center towers, the Twin Towers fell in 9-11. And that happened. There were all kinds of conspiracy theories about, because people had calculated it or so it was spouting off that the fires that were created could never have gotten hot enough to actually melt the steel and collapse the buildings. And Alex was hired by NIST to come in and do experiments in their fire lab, or he recreated floor holes floors of the building, complete with a fire cabinet and all the rest, set them on fire and showed what actually happened. And he demonstrated why Howard Lutnik's own firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, went down that day that the Lutnik lost all his employees and his brother, the floors above that the floors that Alex studied. So Alex finds himself when Howard Lutnik comes in to run the Commerce Department, essentially

15:44working for Lutnik. Lutnik not only has no interest in whatever Alex has done, or no interest in the Commerce Department, but Lutnik does things that makes Alex's research life basically untenable. Like, it just takes away all the credit cards. You want to spend $10,000 or anything, Lutnik personally has to sign off of it and he's not in the White House, so he's not there to sign off of it. It was just like, but the bigger point I wanted to make with Alex, and the whole, I can't tell you the whole fire science story, his fire science story is that you can find these sort of stories all over the federal government where someone with a passion for something and a really interesting reason why they have the passion are diving deep into some problem and expect no money, no fame, all they want to do is solve the problem. And he's dealing with obviously one of the great risks in American life right now. But this guy who is, he is the expert, he is the research program, has over the years been so worn down by the way our government's run that he's leaving.

16:45He was a Greek immigrant. He came from Greece. He's going back to Greece. And age 56, by the way, he quits at age 56. Yes, he said, I'm just exhausted, I can't fight this system anymore. And it raises this question. How do we decide who gets to run the Commerce Department? It's mad how we decide that. The president gets elected and he puts one of his buddies in charge. And even the Senate who's just, who's there to advise and consent, the Senate has a right to reject. But this kind of question is the Senate ass how are luck at Lucknic are like, how much did you have to do with Jeffrey Epstein? The questions that should be asked is, what do you know about the Commerce Department? Have you ever run a large organization? Are you going to spend time there? Are you interested in it? Like are you qualified for the job? And this isn't just a Trump problem. This is like an American governance problem. The too often they aren't. And it is a great shame because the things that they are managing, the things that are

17:47below them are eggs of existential importance to the American people. So I think this is like, we may have arrived at a time where we can start having the conversation about how we run ourselves because it's mad. Can I just say as a footnote, I paid such close attention to all those conspiracy theories tried to debunk as many as I could back in the day 20 years ago, 25 year anniversary. I remember when the crew at popular mechanics published first a series of articles, then an entire book debunking those conspiracy theories. Maybe that's why I was particularly drawn to this. And the finding from Alex quote, the surprise finding was just how brittle all that insulation was and that the plane's impact had cracked it and exposed the steel columns and trusses directly to fire. Insulation meant to protect the twin towers. Steel merely served as more fuel for that fire. So this is the guy who is able to unravel that. And as you explain, he replicated two high floors in the North Tower where Marsh Maclennan

18:52had been located and Howard Lutnik's company was just above them. So I thought that brought the whole story full circle because here's a guy if Lutnik knew you'd think he'd really want this guy to continue his mission, but he has no interest in the subject matter or this particular individual and a talented guy leaves. Here's what I most wanted to say to Michael Lewis and indulge me for just a moment. I read a book at the same time I was reading your book called AI for Good. Josh Tyrangel wrote it, talented guy, really interesting book. I'm reading these two books. His is a story about how AI is being used for beneficial purposes already today. And now I read your book and I say, what a lost opportunity. If only they hadn't been on some search for waste fraud and abuse, but if only they were earnest. Well intentioned work within the system and were there to improve government efficiency. I wonder what could have come from it. Am I being naive? No, you're not being naive.

19:52In fact, this is what I thought right when they went and I thought this made this could turn out well because the government, this is the soft spot of the government technology. The government doesn't do well in periods of rapid technical change. It's not made to keep pace with the private sector. It really does need to be refreshed and the technology really needs to be refreshed. These people potentially with must-helping them could have gone right at that problem and they would have had enormous license to deal with it. They'd have been giving great latitude. And instead they did something completely different. Instead they didn't see it to fix anything. I mean the department of it's so funny. This has this line where he says, the thing about government is all the agencies are named the opposite of what they really are. And there's some truth to that. But there's more truth to that as applied to the Department of Government efficiency. They came in and they made everything less efficient.

20:55It was a huge missed opportunity. You point out that more than 80% of federal spending is on national defense entitlements and interest. Doge looked at none of that. Didn't engage Congress at all on its spending. And then there's a lengthy discussion in the book about the Institute of Peace, $55 million annual budget according to Michael Lewis, .0007857 of the federal budget. Why would they have spent time on things like that? It's a great question. And it's like correlated to that question. What do they think they were doing? I can tell you with the character in the book thinks, it's a security guard who was in charge of keeping them out of the building and fail. He said, this was not a government agency. He points out. This is a quasi-government institution chartered by Congress, also funded by private funds. We own our own building. We're a private nonprofit.

21:57That them coming in here and taking the building is like them coming into your house and taking your house. He says, yes, we've sort of like government adjacent. So what he thinks they were doing, but nobody knows who they are. They're obscure. Why bother? He says the reason they bothered is because they wanted to show they could take it. They just wanted to show they could. If you can't stop them from doing that, you can't stop them from doing anything. That what was really going on in those early days was an assertion of power. It was like trying to push it as far as they could push it to see where they would be stopped. The amazing thing was how far they got. The amazing thing is they have that building. It's now the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Michael Lewis's new book is called Blockers. It's terrific. Final question for you because at this stage, you can write about anything and have a great book deal and get a lot of attention. What is the personal calculus? How does a subject catch your interest such that you decide?

23:01I'll invest my precious time and write a book on that. Lots of things catch my eye and then I get into them and I lose interest. There are six main characters in this book. In no case, when I go back to them, and we go back to them over and over, was I less interested the next time than I was the time before. It's just an accumulation of interest. It's not one thing. In this case, it's a big important subject. It's fate of our democracy. It's a big subject. These characters are incredibly interesting and I can make them swing on the page. The difficulty of the subject also often attracts me. If it's hard to do, that partly explains why it hasn't been done. There's a reason to do it. All these things factor into it. Truth is, I know it when I feel it and once I felt it, I don't really think much about why I'm doing it.

24:01Others don't have the intellect nor the fortitude to endure and wrap their heads around some of the subject matter that you've addressed. I mean that as high praise. The book is great. Thank you for your willingness to come by and discuss it. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. This audience will love Michael Lewis' new book. It's called Blockers. I want to do a quick call segment. I actually have something in mind relative to the book and the $40 trillion that we find ourselves in debt. I want to entertain a very quick round of calls on something that he floated here, which really wasn't fully developed in the book, but man, it's intriguing. Is it possible that Doge was all a shiny object? And it was a daily headline. Who are those guys? Look at where they are today. So as to divert us in intentionally divert us from where attention should have been focused in those early days of Trump 2.0. This is Book Club with Michael's Mikanish from Sirius X. What was the stated role of Doge to rid, waste, fraud, and abuse?

25:06I cheered that on. But Michael Lewis points out in his brand new book that more than 80% of federal spending on national defense entitlements and interest 80% and Doge looked at none of that, nor did Doge engage Congress on spending. So what was the real mission? And he just raised the specter that maybe the real mission was chaos. Exactly what they did. So as to drain our attention spans from other areas, thoughts on that. Barbara, you're in Georgia. Tell me just one thing. Doge was absolutely a shiny object created to divert everyone once attention so that they could get access so that Elon Musk could get access to all kinds of top secret and need to know information and worst screwed. Well, you're taking it to a whole other level than what I was discussing with my guest.

26:06How about you, Eric? You're in the state of Washington. What did you want to offer? 455 Rome. That's when they were sacked by the vandals and that's how we got vandalism. That's only where they weren't smart enough to do it. They were just in there to be disruptive to government and take down the federal government. That's it. There's no grand scheme. The vandals. Interesting. Okay. Vandals is an interesting word choice. I think accurate. John, Indiana, what did you want to say? Thanks for the call. Trump's second term has been very disappointing. I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if I like, depending on it. And I was pleased with this first term, but man, he is such an ego maniac. The Iran, the Iran said, I mean, there've been, there's so many things I could say in response, not in defense of him, but just in response of how it's gone so wrong.

27:07Such a gross miscal. Such a gross miscalculation on Iran would be at the top of my list. Rich, you're in Wisconsin. Go ahead and say something about the conversation pertaining to Doge. Yeah. So I was in contracting during that time in and I was deputy director and we had to, I had to defend or facilitate the defense of contracts that were life saving that's something, something year old Doge employee identified as a consulting contract. Well, these consulting contracts were in fact contract for companies to come in and calibrate life saving, can't be treatment equipment. And if it weren't for the medical center professionals jumping through hoops to send feedback up the chain, people could have died. And this was one of the straws that broke the camel's back.

28:11I ended up retiring three months after I got promoted because it was just disgusting. Wow. Well, that sounds like a tale straight out of Michael Lewis's new book, which is called Blockers. Some say Odo business management software is like fertilizer because of the way it promotes growth. Some say Odo is like a magic beanstalk scaling with you while being magically affordable. And some say Odo's programs for manufacturing accounting and more are like building blocks. For creating a custom software suite, but I say Odo is all of it, fertilizer magic bean stock building blocks for business. Yeah. Odo. Exactly what every business needs. Sign up at Odo.com. That's Odo.com. When an intruder approaches a home, they expect a camera. What they don't expect. Stop. This is simply safe. Police are on the way. Using smart AI cameras, live US-based agents help deter intruders in under 30 seconds.

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