Episode 1046: Inside DOGE — The Waste Was Real and the Resistance Was Fierce

In January 2025, Tyler Hassen was running a diversified energy business in Houston. Weeks later, he was inside the West Wing as a DOGE senior insider, named Acting Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management, and Budget at the Department of the Interior with authority over $35 billion in spending and 8,000 federal employees. Now he's written the first book-length account of DOGE from someone who actually executed the work. Hassen joins Newt to discuss Inside DOGE: The Real Story from a Senior Insider — part memoir, part management autopsy. He describes late-night West Wing meetings, an $830 million contract request he says he could have designed in high school, a California water crisis that became an international media firestorm, and the personal cost his family paid. His verdict: the waste was real, the resistance was fierce, and the work is far from finished.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.