Maddow: Trump’s ‘Deleting the Gov’t’ to Install a ‘National CEO’ by ‘Buyout Program’ Roll Out Initiated Today

MADDOW: “‘Americans are going to have to get over their dictator-phobia.’ We need to delete the government, destroy all nonprofits and schools, and get rid of everything the government funds. We need to bring it all down to zero. We need to destroy the whole system. And the reason we need to do that is so we can have a national CEO take over and run everything. And what is a national CEO? A national CEO is a dictator. Just — just run that definition one more time.”

[Clip starts]
YARVIN: “You need a CEO. And a national CEO is what’s called a dictator. It’s the same thing. There’s no difference between a CEO and a dictator. If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator-phobia.”
[Clip ends]

MADDOW: “‘Americans need to get over their dictator-phobia.’ This is the philosopher, right, of this milieu from which we got J.D. Vance. This is the philosophy that drives the eccentric right-wing tech billionaire class that has ascended, that is effectively the defining feature and driving force of Trump’s second term. That is where they got J.D. Vance from. ‘Vance is friends with Curtis Yarvin, whom he openly cites as a political influence.’ And this isn’t like a Rosetta stone, you know, it’s not that complex. But they really did tell us in advance what they were going to do, and now they are doing it. And I think the biggest barrier to getting Americans to understand that during the election campaign was because it was so crazy, you couldn’t believe they were really going to do it, right? But now they’re doing it. Because in order to delete the government, to destroy the whole American government and the American system and rip it out like a tumor, so instead we can get over our dictator-phobia and at last have a national CEO, we can at last have a dictator, what do we have to do to get there? What’s the, like, operational day one plan to get there? What should we see these guys try to do if, in fact, they get that power that J.D. Vance says they need to wield more ruthlessly?”

[Clip starts]
YARVIN: “So, I have reduced this very complicated problem to a simple four-letter acronym, which is RAGE. And rage stands for: retire all government employees. Very, very, very simple. Now, the problem with this is, why have you never heard this before?”
[Clip ends]

MADDOW: “Retire all government employees. It’s interesting, he doesn’t say fire them, he says retire them, both because RAGE is a better acronym than FAGE, but he also is suggesting giving them all payouts, giving government employees generous payments so they will all leave the government so the government can be closed, can be deleted, can be collapsed so that we can have a national CEO, so we can have a dictator instead. It’s a pretty out there idea, right? Pretty wild, pretty far out there, as J.D. Vance might say. But here’s what it looks like tonight in the flesh, because they’re actually trying to do it. Tonight, a buyout program for every worker in the U.S. federal government: ‘If you choose to remain in your current position, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency, but should your position be eliminated, you will be treated with dignity. If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government. This program begins effective January 28th,’ meaning today, ‘and is available to all federal employees until February 6th,’ next Thursday. ‘If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits, regardless of your daily workload, until September 30th, 2025 or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation.’ So they’re doing it. They’re offering a buyout. They are threatening to — well, they are trying to induce every single employee of the government to resign, and they say they will pay them to go. After that, though, no guarantees. Don’t you want to get out now? This is weird, right? This is new. The reason this has never been done before is because this is not something that anyone would do if they actually wanted the U.S. government to continue. Even if they wanted to change what the us government did, they would want to keep federal employees in position so that the government could do anything. The idea of retiring all government employees, every, every employee of the federal government, this is an idea that comes from one weird place. It comes from the very weird, eccentric, right-wing tech billionaire world where, in their eyes, this is the end of the American republic and thank God, because this lousy democracy thing has been holding us back, and what we really need is a CEO, a national CEO. What is it they call it again?”

[Clip starts]
YARVIN: “You need a CEO. And a national CEO is what’s called a dictator. It’s the same thing. There’s no difference between a CEO and a dictator. If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator-phobia.”
(...)
MURPHY: “What other options do we have besides voting them out, which we’re seeing is ineffectual?”
Vance: “Yeah. So, again, this is, like, a tough question, but this is maybe the question that confronts us right now, right? (...) So there’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who’s written about some of these things...”
[Clip ends]

MADDOW: “So, we’re not going to do the voting thing anymore. That has proven ineffectual. But there’s this guy that has these other ideas. So now they’re doing it. Retire all government employees. On the same day they rolled that out, today they also caused chaos across all 50 states of this country by just announcing that they were stopping all the things the government does, all the things the government funds. I mean, you could see it, the effects of this ripple out across the country.”