Q&A: The DOGE Chainsaw, Immigration, and Censorship

with John McWhorter

Most of us who are open to the idea that Donald Trump is not the devil incarnate still understand that his presidency is a mixed bag, as are all presidencies. This week, I discuss my reservations about the tariffs with Larry Kotlikoff—full subscribers can watch the episode right now. This clip from my recent subscriber-only Q&A with John McWhorter takes up some of Trump’s major initiatives. If you’d like to watch the whole thing, consider becoming a full subscriber. That will get you access to monthly Q&As and will allow you to pose questions yourself, along with lots of other bonus content. The Glenn Show is supported almost entirely by our supporters—we need you to keep the show and the newsletter going. Thanks to all of you who are doing just that.

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I can certainly see the argument for shrinking the federal bureaucracy. As I say in this clip, if 40% of calls to Social Security offices consist of fraud attempts, it makes sense to try to reduce those attempts and all the administrative costs associated with handling them (the 40% figure has been contested). You’re not going to convince me every federal worker that was employed as of January 19, 2025 was instrumental to the function of government. Redundant workers were being paid with tax dollars that can now be spent more efficiently elsewhere. Perhaps DOGE should have acted more judiciously, but necessary workers laid off in error can be hired back or replaced.

As I’ve said previously, the administration’s deportation actions are not inherently unfair. I don’t see anything wrong with exerting more control over our borders and reducing immigration. And if migrants come here—legally or not—and then commit serious crimes or are found to have committed serious crimes elsewhere, I don’t see anything wrong with deporting them.

But we should be wary of turning immigration enforcement into a witch hunt. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that the activist and Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil would never have been admitted to the US had he declared his political views when applying for a student visa—and I think we ought to question whether Rubio describes those views accurately. Denying visas on the basis of the applicant’s stated political beliefs is permissible under the law. But there is something at the very least creepy about Rubio’s insistence that it’s fine to deport non-citizens whose beliefs the administration finds ideologically distasteful. Even if Khalil does not have all the constitutional protections of citizens, US citizens who want to debate his views are being denied their right to do so. Even protected citizens who agree with him are being sent a clear message: watch what you say.

As a conservative, I’m committed to the First Amendment. That commitment means more than simply supporting the letter of the law. It means protesting the chilling effects of measures meant to intimidate people into withholding their views. Deporting or detaining campus speakers or writers of student op-eds on the basis of their views amounts to censorship. Maybe it’s legal—it’s still censorship. And when the government attempts to censor legitimate speech of any kind, those of us who believe in the democratic necessity of free expression need to slap that attempt down, whether the government’s action is legal or not, whether we agree with the speech or not.

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GLENN LOURY: This next question is from Lesley Bailey. And it is to me:

What does Glen think about the beginning of the Trump administration? I hear so much criticism and would love to hear a reasonable defense. I'm especially interested in Elon Musk and DOGE.

Of course, John, you should feel free to comment.

JOHN MCWHORTER: I'm afraid to at this point.

GLENN LOURY: I'm not gonna provide you with a defense, Lesley. I apologize, but I'm not in the position to provide you with a defense of the Trump administration. I'm not inclined to do that.

So I am cautiously, apprehensively optimistic. I don't know if I want to say I'm optimistic. Things are being shaken up. I wanted things shaken up.

Glenn, how much did you know about the government bloat? That's a genuine question.

Not a whole lot in detail in firsthand. I only know what I read in the newspaper and what I'm hearing in the commentary. I did, by the way, attend to the interview on Fox News that Brett Baier did with Musk and some of the top deputies who were implementing the DOGE operation. These are tech bros. These are one of the founders of Airbnb and other high-ranking business executives who are volunteering their time to help implement this thing.

And based on their persuasive, direct response to the kinds of questions that Brett Baier was putting to them as they went into detail in the duplicate activities that they're uncovering, the exposure to fraud and abuse that they have identified, the inefficiencies of operation. They're bringing a kind of businessman's acumen and incisive assessment of function to a review of government protocol practice and administration. I thought, there is something to be gained by having these people. Not a hatchet, a scalpel, and the tens of thousands of layoffs. We'll see what chickens come home to roost from that.

Yeah, they're upsetting apple carts left and right. And yeah, some of it is no doubt politically and ideologically motivated. I think they're gonna make mistakes. They admit that they have made mistakes. And they're gonna save billions. I don't know about trillions. I think that's their objective, trillions. But they're gonna end up being able to find, uncover, and remedy some excesses.

I'll just give one example. There are a lot of social security numbers authorized every year, more so than perhaps can be accounted for by people who are aging into social security coverage or coming into the country through legitimate means and entering into the system. And this statistic was thrown out again—I don't know if it's accurate—of the telephone calls that come into the Social Security Administration seeking to change the account to which the social security payments would be sent when there's an electronic transfer. Forty percent of them are fraudulent efforts. They're people who have somehow or another come by a social security number and are attempting to direct the payment into their own accounts, contrary to what would have otherwise been the case.

If a number like that is even close to being right, that's a pretty significant thing. They talk about computers that can't talk to each other. Part of this social security problem is that evidently the HHS system that Social Security employs and the birth registry system—these are social security numbers for newborns that are being used to make claims for social security payments on behalf of people who are fictitious, et cetera.

But this is not something that I know a whole lot about. I'm just sitting on the sidelines here observing the back and forth and thinking, it's probably not a bad thing that somebody is in there trying to figure out, clean house, straighten things out. Order and a kind of rigorous, efficient assessment to a government operation.

But it's so political. I'd be in interested in knowing how it looks to you from your perch in New York City. People are defending government employees. Of course, many government employees are good people doing good work. And maybe, as I say, some of the cutting has been excessive. Some of the government employees are undoubtedly not producing value for dollar. And a rationalization—again, something that I've heard—you cut until you cut too much and then you add back is a kind of a way of doing it. That's the way you really get down to the lean operation. You don't mind overshooting a little bit in the first place, because you can add back. Better than keeping duplication in place. Stuff like that.

If you're cutting so deep that you've killed USAID, and there's a horrible earthquake in Myanmar, and we can barely pitch in? I feel like maybe they had some sort of good idea, but are they qualified to be careful or targeted enough not to end up just creating the kind of harm that a teenager would?

In doing this, I want to know that they know enough about the agencies that they're cutting from. My intuition is, hearing the numbers of people who work for some of these entities and looking at these enormous buildings, thinking maybe there are some timekeepers in there. Maybe there has been kind of mission creep and all these executives all doing the same stuff. I'll bet there is a lot of that. But is it so much that USAID ends up being essentially decimated? I find that hard to believe.

And frankly, overall, these deportations or attempts thereat, I'm not seeing any good side of that. That's really scaring me.

Now, are you talking about the Venezuelan gang members? Or are you talking about demonstrators on campuses?

Mahmoud Khalil, from my own institution. There does not appear to be a remotely defensible reason, is the issue. There seems to be too much of that going on at this point. And I worry about that. That's an understatement. Not “worry.” I hate to say it, but unless I get a different explanation, I'm appalled.

Yeah I agree with that actually. And not just because of the sympathy that I might have for some people protesting against policies like support of the war in Gaza that I agree with personally. When I hear the Secretary of State in front of a microphone saying, “We don't want these people in our country,” and what he means is not gang members who are raping and robbing. What he means is people who are obstreperous and protesting against government policy, and you don't like what they're saying.

I hear him call them terrorist sympathizers when they have merely expressed a political opinion about our foreign policy. They haven't necessarily sympathized with anyone or provided material aid to any terrorist. When I see them hunting through minutiae in order to find evidence of an op-ed piece that somebody has written that then labels them an enemy of the state. And because you have the authority, yeah, you can get 'em out.

“I want 'em outta my country. What are they doing in my country?” When I hear bogus arguments like, hypothetically, “If they had told us in their visa application that this was their political opinion, they wouldn't have been admitted in the first place, therefore ...” I'm appalled. Definitely.

Now, the other thing I wanna say here is these tariffs scare me to death. I'm an economist. The straightforward economic wisdom is you're taxing and you're interrupting the flow of commerce in terms of comparative advantage and efficient global exchange of goods and services. There's potential for inducing not just inflation but also recession through the deleterious consequences of retaliatory behavior on the other country's part. You're killing the goose that's laying a golden egg, in terms of international commerce. That's a concern.

I know that there are counterarguments to it, but they sound speculative to me—although I'm an economist, I'm not an expert on international trade. They’re dubious to me. That is, the strategic benefit. We want fair trade, not free trade. We're trying to induce responses on the other side that are more commodious, more welcoming of our own goods into their country and we will be able to do it. Or we're investing in the future of America in the manufacturing industry by providing a protective shield to our own domestic producers. Or we're providing incentives for foreign investors to locate their productive facilities within the United States on the other side of the wall so that they don't have to face the tariffs when they try to sell their goods and so on.

I think you're messing around with something that's delicate and that could potentially go disastrously wrong. So when I hear the market has taken a nose dive on the news that tariff day is approaching—and by the way, tariff day is approaching. I think it might be today,

Wasn't it yesterday? Liberation Day, right?

Yeah. Liberation Day. It was April 2nd. But in any case, I'm holding my breath. I'm afraid. I'm apprehensive. I worry that it could go wrong, it could go badly wrong. And when I hear people in the government say things like, “Maybe there will be a little bit more inflation, and maybe there even will be a mild recession, but it's worth it in the long run because our strategic objectives will be advanced or because our global conflict with China will be abetted to our benefit in the long run by these things,” I say, I hope you're right about that. But I got my doubts. I got my serious doubts about that.

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