Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has been increasingly vocal on issues facing Americans.
He has been a leading voice in confronting anti-semitic behavior around the world and on college campuses and called for Harvard to release all of the names of the students who are members of 31 anti-Semitic campus groups on campus to make sure these young Hamas supporters are never hired by a Wall Street firm.
After the violent anti-Jewish pogrom carried out in the Netherlands that left at least 25 people injured after hundreds of Israeli soccer fans were targeted and attacked in Amsterdam, Ackman also called for Pershing Square Holdings to eliminate its listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.
Ackman joined Megyn Kelly to discuss Discuss Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy getting to work on reforming the government with DOGE.
Megyn Kelly: It’s super fun to watch Trump name these names to the cabinet. I don’t know about you, but I’m loving it. I think it’s just so innovative to go completely Trumpian. Just keep people on their heels. Do not go with establishment types like he tried to do the first time.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with him going with Trump loyalists, but that term keeps getting bandied about as though it’s a bad thing.
Bill Ackman: Actually, I think it’s… I call it the dream team. Really, I’m super impressed. We have Elon Musk. We have a good friend of mine, Vivek Rob Suwani, who’s incredibly talented. I love all these. I’ve actually been super impressed with all the pics so far.
Megyn Kelly: The New York Times, The Daily podcast today, and The New York Times itself, is really wrestling with Elon’s elevation to the right-hand man of the sitting President-Elect. They don’t seem happy. I feel like you should look at somebody like Elon who’s willing to serve in any capacity for our government and just say thank you.
But they are concerned. He’s got a hundred different lawsuits against him. How is he going to deal with those conflicts of interest? He’s got all sorts of regulatory constrictions on him that are important to our safety. How can he possibly be in this important role? What do you make of Elon being willing to serve as he is?
Bill Ackman: I think he’s a great American. I think he’s a great global citizen. If you have to think of a guy who’s made more consequential impact on society, on everything from the electric car to space to now Neuralink, AI, he’s, I would say, the most important figure of our time. In the non-political sphere. And now we have the benefit of all of his talents working alongside the President. It’s an incredible home run. I have not been this excited to be an American, if you will, and a in very long time. And so it’s amazing.
Megyn Kelly: Yeah, I feel the same. And so what they announced last night was that Elon and Vivek are going to work together on DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, and start trying to find efficiencies in the biggest business of them all, the United States government, and figure out where we can tighten our belt and save some money.
And yet, the established Washington DC class is very upset about this because it means jobs of federal bureaucrats, and that’s what runs DC. So what do you make of this idea of DOGE? Trump says in the announcement, it’s going to be completely outside government. These two will not be government employees.
Bill Ackman: Yeah, I think it’s a home run. I’ve always thought of the United States as one of the greatest… My day job is to find these really great companies that have lost their way. And then what we try to do is bring in great new management and have them fix the business. And that’s basically what’s happening here. And they’re not going to have to look far.
And everyone knows the government is the most ineffective bureaucracy in the world. Our governments, generally, ours has not particularly impressed us as citizens. And now we have an opportunity not just to find a cost savings, but actually to operate more effectively.
The analogy that Musk makes is he says, “Think of the government as just when you go get your license updated, think about how inefficient that process is. Well, imagine the entire country being run that way.”
I think that’s the opportunity. And having outsiders do this. Elon certainly has the playbook. X was a quasi-governmental agency in the way it operated in San Francisco. He stepped in, he took out 80, 90% of the employees, and it’s become a much more effective platform: Software development, the various features, functionality, have been able to happen much more quickly under new leadership.
I think that’s what we have here. I think it’s going to be a huge boom for the economy, for business, generally, and that will help everyone.
Megyn Kelly: When we saw Javier Millé run for and then ascend to power in Argentina, a lot of us were shocked by how he spoke and the things he did with the chainsaw that he was going to take to government and highly entertaining. Here he is with this chainsaw. And look at this guy. I love him.
I have who are from Argentina, and they’re absolutely thrilled with what he’s doing. And he told everybody there, “We’re in for some short term pain as we try to get our enormous inflation down. But these are the things we have to do.”
Here he is. This is a video for the listening audience of him pulling these names off the board, the Ministry of this, the Ministry of that, and throwing them behind him. We don’t need it. It’s down. It’s out.
And that’s how I see Elon and Vivek, who are supposed to go in there and Javier Mele, our government. I had the advantage of being next to Elon in September when he spoke on the All In podcast at their summit. I, too, was there and spoke on the same thing. And he was describing what it was he would like to do if this whole thing worked out, if Trump were elected, and if he could form this Doge thing.
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Megyn Kelly: So you heard him, Bill, say in response to Jason, who said 2, 3, 4 %, and Elon said, “Oh, it’s going to be more than that.” So how high do you think we could go on shaving the bureaucracy?
Bill Ackman: I think there’s a massive amount of waste, and I think you’re going to see fairly dramatic change. I think it’ll be incredibly uplifting for the people who stay, and I think it’ll be uplifting for the people who have the opportunity to do something new. As he said, I think they’re going to be quite generous with severance, making sure that people can transition to the private sector. So I think it’s going to be good for everyone.
Megyn Kelly: Yeah. What do you make of that? Because the last thing Trump wants 100 days into his administration is massive layoffs that run up the unemployment rate and make them look bad. So he’s not going to want that narrative in the press, even though he will want these efficiencies. So how would you recommend they handle the offloading of these federal employees?
Bill Ackman: Sure. So what’s interesting is you don’t want to give people a disincentive to find a job. If you just hand everyone two years severance, some people may say, “Okay, I’ll take the next 20 months to just have fun. I’ll go look for a job.” And then it becomes hard to get a job at the end of that.
I think the right approach is to give enough severance so people are absolutely covered between this job and the next one. Then basically, pay it to them over time. But when they find a job, pay them the balance of the severance. Let’s say they give it a year of severance. Someone finds a job a month after leaving government, well, then they get 11 months of salary as a bonus. People are incentivized to find their next job. I think you have job training. Then, of course, there are a lot of people in government where you could probably just instead of severance, you allow them to begin the retirement process early. And government employees are very well taken care of in terms of pension.
Watch the full interview here:
