Antonio Gracias: DOGE updates, Voter fraud, Finding 'Big Balls' | All-In Live from Miami

[Music] Where's Antonio Gracias? Bring him up. How bad is it? How messed up is our government? So, if Twitter was like the JV league, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. How is he able to find big balls? Where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue? I mean, where do these guys come from? You found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote. Yes, this is actually true. Every vote that is cast illegal in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen. So, Antonio, we we know you're very busy because you decided, like a couple of our other friends, to take a second job working in

our government for a 100 or so days. Yeah. Give him a round of applause for that. Um, you know, Trump is a unique individual in all the world. There's maybe polarizing in some ways, but one thing that's not polarizing is Doge. I think everybody wants to see waste, fraud, and abuse and controlled spending in government. Maybe there's some questions about how fast it's going, but we all know you and Elon like to go, you know, at a brisk pace. You laid back and you joined a little later in the process, like a stat. You joined maybe what, 15, 20 days ago. Uh, I've been there for eight weeks. Eight weeks. Okay. So like yeah

60 60 days and you went public with it maybe a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I wasn't with law Maryland for the first four weeks so you didn't know I was there. Yes. So um so how bad is it? How how messed up is our government? How insane are the processes? You're a process guy. You know we both worked on the the Twitter uh acquisition and the and the transfer there and did all the zerobased budgeting. I mean, maybe compare and contrast it to that which was maybe one of the most horrific corporate entities I've ever seen in my life and how that was being run. It was tough. Um, well, let me start with thank you guys. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's great to be down here to see

everybody. Um, and let me also say that it's an honor to serve America. Like whatever I am doing, I am grateful to be able to do it. I'm grateful my partners for allowing me to do it and my clients for supporting it. And it is it truly is an honor to be there. There's many great people in the government trying to help. So, let me start with that. Yeah, please. Yeah. It is a sacrifice, right? You're you're taking time out of your day job. It's definitely a sacrifice, but it it it really I feel very grateful that I have the capacity and 30 years of training in lead operations that I can be useful. You know, that feels very feels I feel

with gratitude. Yeah. How bad is it? Uh so if Twitter was like the the JV league, this is like the NBA. Um it's the most complex thing I've ever seen. I have in uh our office in DC, I have a I've mapped now as an example the entire system of like basically from the border to the benefits programs. It's about a 40ft board and it looks like a bos. It's I mean it's an incredible uh like spaghetti gram of stuff and yeah, I've never seen anything so complex in my life. So the answer to your question is it's worse than I thought. much much worse than what we saw at Twitter now X and America Americans and all of you we deserve better. Okay. If we were to and I'm sure Chimath has some

questions in Freeberry, but if we were to look at $1 spent by our government, waste, fraud, abuse, how many pennies of the dollar is it? If you had to just based on what you've seen so far, arrange here's sad. If you go into any company, any company you guys has ever seen that is not like super wellrun, it probably is like easy cut 15%. Easy, easy, easy. Um, this is where the 15 this is where the the trillion dollar number came from. 15% of of $7 billion. I think if we had the political will, you'd easily get that 15% no problem. um not without any problem at all and without cutting the core uh entitlement programs. So it's definitely there. The question is

do people want to do it or not? And remember every dollar we take we are taking from an NGO or a beltway consultant. You know it's it's actually that people are screaming about this because we're taking money from them. Um and it it is whatever you read in the news media I got to tell you it isn't true. I mean um the cuts I think it's 88% of of the people that have left the government have taken packages. The packages are very lucrative. uh there sort of you know 9 months or so of severance. Um and they're they're voluntary. So yeah, I tell you and I also say the people that work in government who are good, there's lots of good people in the government that I

have met and have pointed this at all this stuff. They deserve better. Okay, imagine trying to be a civil servant. You want to do the right thing. You're working there because you care about America and you're in this like massive bureaucratic morass with all this stuff on top of you. And man, I've seen like I've seen OIG reports where they the people have reported to OIG like sex trafficking and they turn it in and nothing happens. Like literally nothing happens. Okay. So that's very frustrating and they stick it out. They keep going and they keep working hard for America. So I I think it's it's not just about the cost cuts, it's about the

culture like the culture change of allowing allowing good people who are in the government to understand that someone's listening that with when they want to make improvement change or when they find fraud, waste and abuse, they can do it and there's an avenue now to do it. Uh I think that's actually going to be one of the most important lasting thing we leave is this idea that your voice matters in the government that there are good people in the government and when they want to do the right thing there's a way to do it and you got people coming back to work in the office. Oh, I have to tell you. So, um, you know, we have been pillaried often in the press for security where I

started. And, um, here are the facts. When I got there, just like at Twitter, the parking lot was empty. And I'm talking about stadiumsiz parking, okay? Empty. Uh, the office was empty. There was no one in the corporate office, the headquarters office in Woodland, Maryland. Um, and then I we because we follow our process of mapping from like end to end the system. We went to visit a couple offices. I went to one myself. The one that I went to, there were about 20 people in the waiting room. There were seven people in the windows. Of the seven people, three had their shades half down. Those people were taking phone calls because during CO, they turned everyone into phone operators.

And we learned is they were still running on CO operations. So we have now um through our efforts and efforts of the inter administrator brought everyone back to the office and back to the offices in the field. We haven't closed one field office, not one since we've been there. Everything you're reading about service levels is not true. Um, what I saw, imagine how frustrating that is if you're you're waiting in the waiting room, you see seven windows out of 25 open and three other people are taking phone calls and you're waiting. I mean, talk about customer service. So, look, like in in all the companies that we all run, we always talk about using incentives to shape the outcome you

want. And I think you keep insisting, which I think is right, that civil servants by and large want the right things to happen. That's why they chose to go and work for the government. So what is the incentive we need to change? Is it a compensation incentive? Is it like what like what is it? Look, I think the people that work in the government, it's a normal distribution of everything, right? It's two and a half million people in the government plus contractors. And you know, some people are great, some people aren't great and every a lot of people in the middle and the people in the middle react to the incentives as you as you point out. I think the most important thing here is

transparency of the metrics because they these folks aren't there for the money. Many of them are very good because we're make money somewhere else. The incentives we should create are uh transparency and some basic metrics. They know how they're doing. You know, we we were as example at social security. We were criticized for the website uptime. Well, turns out web set up time has been better since we got there than after. Imagine we have engineers and we've now uh published the metrics in the website publicly so people would see it. So the engineering team now managed the website can see um you know that they're doing a good job

or not doing a good job and the public can see they're doing a good job or not doing a good job. I I don't think financial incentives are always useful but this is not just about money like for example if you if you look at Singapore the Singaporean approach from Lee Kuanu was let's create a a government that is extremely uh empowered but let's also make it quite small let's make them well compensated and let's try to find sort of an elite cadri of folks is that approach possible in the United States or should we even think that we should try something like that? I mean, look, Singapore is a unique ex a unique experiment in the world. It's

also a place where you uh you know, you might wind up getting caneed if you drop chewing gum on the on the ground. Okay. So, um in America where we have a different a different level of um I would say of u freedom and rights. You know, we should strive for a civil service that is professional, well compensated and missionoriented. And that mission orientation is serving the United States. And I think that gets back to look there are very good people. They want to do the right thing. Serve their country. That's why they're there. And it's uh I wouldn't make it I wouldn't make it about the money. I would make it about the mission. And and

we'll get them we get there are very good people that they're on mission. I met them. They are the ones pointing all this stuff out to us. Right. Yeah. Can you talk about um you guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team? Big Balls and Big Balls was there. We were talking about this backstage. All of those guys were like 12 years old. What is it about the role, the opportunity, the way it was presented that attracted this group of what were incredibly wellspoken, highly intelligent, clearly extraordinarily motivated individuals. It's the sort of caliber of talent that all of us aspire to hire and f first of all find hire and

then they're on the mission. Is it Elon's inspiration and the reach he has that made this happen? Is this a particular moment in American history? Because I was looking at that table and I was thinking about like the founding fathers and the age of the founding fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were all super young and I was like, man, this is an opportunity to kind of rewrite how government operates in America today. But I was just struck by the age and the talent and how that came together and kind of where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue and you guys you guys have recruiters out there? I mean, where does where do these guys

come from? So, uh, we do have we do have a recruiting team actually. Um, they're great. U Baris and Emily do the recruiting. And I'll tell you, I just want to stop for a second and say this. Th this is extraordinary. These people are extraordinary. All of them. The young people you saw at the table are extraordinary. Um, they're amazing engineers. I mean, they're like any one of us would be they're 10x engineers. we would all be thrilled to have in our companies. Elon obviously is an extraordinary leader. So they come they come for for for him. But I think they're really motivated by the mission. They're motivated by the idea that this

is a moment where they can actually make an extraordinary difference to the country and that is a flywheel that brings more people, right? So they bring their friends and it's, you know, you recruit other people in um and there's there are extraordinary extraordinary people there, man. So you saw the people at the table in that particular interview. I didn't say a word. I literally it wasn't the company. I actually was you and the other guy. Yeah. I didn't say anything. The reason I didn't say anything was because I didn't need to. Yeah. These guys are extraordinary. Um and like you know, one of the men there spoke about this. Ethan, he is in he's in my son's class

at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard with two classes left, right, to come do this. Um you know, Big Ball is an example. He's great. Ron, the guy with I mean I I work with an engineer named Rahm was great. U you and then and I got to tell you there's a whole another strat of people that you didn't see there who are kind of in their 30s. Um, I think my my buddy Josh is working on uh on the college stuff and a few other things. These guys are I mean this guy was a senior executive rising star at KKR left his job to come do this. Okay. And there's innumerable number of people like this. It's an extraordinary group. I feel honored to be part of it. I feel honored to work with them. It really is

Can I tell you an answer to this? Yeah. But I just want like do you think that this cuz these guys aren't going to work in the government forever. They're coming in, they're building something, they're activating, and they're moving on back to their private life like the founding fathers did at the start of the American government. Is that a better model for how government should operate rather than have career employees, career politicians, but treat it more like civil service where everyone has some role that they should play at some point like they do in Israel where you have to, you know, go go to the army for a few years and you everyone is required. Same in Singapore actually.

Yeah. um where everyone kind of has to go spend their time in the government, contribute, participate, but it doesn't become a mechanism where there's an incentive to grow it and get more money flowing through it because that's how I individually as a politician or employee long-term would benefit from the government. Yeah, I think it's a great point. It's a great point on Singapore. Actually, I should have brought that up when Jamath has a question. I think that we're proving there's there's two uh types of people in government today. There's careers, they call them, and politicals, right? I think there should be a third type, which is what you're talking about. people that are doing

public service for a short duration, shorter duration, whether it's me 130 as as a SGE or, you know, it's a couple of years as an engineer or something. I think a culture of this in America would be great for America and great not just for what it does to the government, but how it binds us as a people, right? Serving your country, going there, seeing how hard it is, seeing the the way it works, understanding that like really from the inside what's going on. Listen, I had no idea. It's like what part of the government did you work in for your two-year service or your 18 months, right? This would be this would be a a great thing for America and a great thing for

our society because um that culture of public service I think would bring us closer together. You were going to say something about the I had um I mean without saying too much but you can guess. So all of us have known Elon for a really long time. I also worked for another person that's of that same stature for a long time and he's much shorter. Much shorter. Um, and one of I say that a very good friend of his came to see me recently for lunch and he asked me this exact same question about Elon. He said like it was kind of like as just like the like that's the question that they were grappling with. How is he able to find big balls and so many big balls? I

actually can tell you um I've seen him find big balls. Yeah, it's um it's a it's a serious strategy though. what I he does is he responds to emails or tweets Twitter people will say like I have a solution to this um we should do that and then I've been CCed on messages where he sends them to the right person and he has people to vet them and see if this idea actually works and I think he's like very opportunistic and doesn't prejudge where you went to school and what your credentials is are. It's almost the opposite. The less credentials you are he has a predisposition to think you're more right. Have you solved a problem? By the

way, this is a this is a Peter Teal. But but my my answer to this was there's there's a lot of people that can be responsive in email. I think there's a handful of people that are real northern stars for technical talent, but he's the only one that when you walk in the room, he says, "Here's this mission." And it is so generally otherworldly. Nobody else can really say that. It is a flywheel, as you said, that is extremely unique. The fact that you can direct that entropy to the United States government I think is a blessing. Now the question is how do we follow up and make it attractive because to your point I saw those kids on that interview and any of my five kids if they had done

what they did I would have been so proud. I was so impressed with these kids. Very impressive. And and you're like you're proud to be an American watching these kids. You saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a a grin ear to ear. He was proud. proud. He is proud. I think it's important for maybe people to sit back and say this has all been done in a 100 days from a cold start. It's not like he brought in people or you brought in people who were like I know the lay of the land here. It was like we're going to figure this out from first principles do zerobased budgeting whatever it is look at the data and see where it leads

us. And I think one of the disturbing things about the data and most controversial issues in America today is the border. Yeah. And why did Biden let so many people through the border? It was kind of a question if it was even happening. Should we trust these border encounter numbers? It doesn't seem real. And and there's a lack of trust in the government. One side is saying, "Hey, we let all these people in. There's 15 20 million extra people here in order to vote Democratic. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me since the Republicans have become the working party." But putting all that aside, you started looking at this and we had a discussion privately

about, hey, are these people signing up to vote? Cuz that would be an indicator that this, you know, theory that people were streaming across the border in order to vote. Um, you found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote. This is confounding. It Yes, this is actually true. So um we have we've sampled a handful of states uh and in those handful of states we found um people registered to vote and we have found people who actually voted and this is all being done by sampling. Okay. So we are sampling uh DHS data and then have to go to the voter roles check the voter roles and then check the give

that to HSI homeless investigations who goes and checks the voter record by subpoena and the and the voter and the cards you sign when you vote. We had uh already three um arrests here in Florida actually and one in one indictment uh in Is that publicly known? Yes, it's it's we we posted it. The DOJ the media has not covered like I haven't seen much about that. So you're saying these are these are three individuals who illegally secured or no legally secured a social security. They legally secured social security numbers um through the through the process we talked about last time asylum or some special program or whatever and they were given um you know

they gave an associate number by by filing a 765 and getting authorization and they registered to vote and they actually voted in 2020 andor 2024. Three have been arrested. I just want to say this carefully. Three have been arrested and one has been indicted. The one we indicted, I want to just stop on this guy for a minute. He's he's an Iraqi national. Uh he voted in 2020 in New York. He um went to prison for shooting somebody. Shot some guy's hand off. Has charged, if I remember correctly, 160 60 or $70,000 of benefits through Medicaid. And has we think is now in Iraq because he's active on his Facebook page and the

IP address is from Iraq. And credit to our friends at HSI, our partners HSI, and to DOJ for tracking this down. I got to tell you guys, it's difficult, laborious work. It really is. Um, but think about that a minute. Is that the tip of the iceberg, Antonio, do you think? Or did you guys do a lot of mining and a lot of digging to come up with those four? How big of a magnitude of an problem do you think this is? What What's your What's your intuition tell you honestly right now about whether there's massive voter fraud or not? Great question and I want to be careful I answer it. Um, I'm going to leave the data. So, I'm not leaving the data and

I'm entering the area of my opinion, which is what you're asking me. My opinion is and actually let me step back and tell you what we did a second and then take my opinion. We are sampling by hand. Um so when you say data mining, we're not mining. We're actually like pick and shovel going into like by hand. This is not mechanized. There's no AI being applied. There's we're using SQL queries. Okay. You're literally pulling one literally snapping a name out of the work authorization database DHS checking that against the voter role and have to go run it down to the state. Super laborious. Okay. So, um, with that in mind, my opinion is that this is the tip

of the iceberg. How big the iceberg is, I don't know, and I don't want to speculate cuz I think it it would be, um, not that I think we can do at this moment. I think we'll have more data over time, but for sure, if we can sample out of a database, uh, and it takes an engineer about a day to find 20-ish cases. So, what DOJ asks for was 20 10 to 20 cases per state. It just give you a sense of of of what's happening. It takes an engineer about a day to find 10 to 20 cases per state in sampling. That gives you an idea of how you know how many there are, right? Um that's that's going on. Are you shocked that people don't care about this more? I'm I'm shock I think people really do

care. Should we be should we care more? Yeah. Yes. Well, yes. I want to separate the questions. Uh I think people care more. My guess is everyone here cares a lot. Okay. A lot about this. I think for some reason the news media doesn't care more now. Should you care? Yes. You know, there's this idea like it's there always a little bit of fraud. It's pervasive. We should just it's not a big deal. Wrong. Here's the reality. Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen. It is your constitutional right to vote in America. And if we don't have a zero defect system, we are violating your constitutional rights. And I will

tell you, you deserve, the American public deserves that we strive for a zero defect system, right? We make medical devices in America with a zero defect system. Yeah. We shouldn't make votes with zero system. If we don't strive for a zero defect system, we will get a lot more fraud. This is why the real idea is so important. We should strive for this. And it doesn't matter if it's one vote. It's easily solved with the last 15 states that don't require voter ID to simply do that. And that would pretty much end this debate, I think. I mean I well I want to tell you uh there are states that do require ID. I think real ID will solve it because real one of the things our

engineers are building and it it was already there but they're making it they're cleaning up making it work properly is a thing called save. There's a database called save that is uh available to the states um in the bot administration. They raised the price I think about a dollar an API call to $3 and change the API call and all the states stopped you stopped using it. Save is a database that has um the actual citizenship data for the entire country. Okay. We we're cleaning up now and making the the actual UI much better. If the states have Real ID and they use save, you would solve this problem. And I I I I cannot understand why a state would not do this. Whose

decision would it be to just change the cost of that API? So great question, Chimath. We the Secretary of Homeland Security, I want to thank her, Secretary Gnome, has just signed a memo, a policy memo to make it free. Yeah. Why is there a charge anyway? It doesn't make any sense to me. Yes. Yeah. Very simple. Uh signature always made this free. Your parents I know your dad is an immigrant. My parents are both immigrants. Both immigrants. Two immigrants sitting here. My mother came here without speak English. Yeah. Um so to be clear pick me. Me too. You're an immigrant. Also an immigrant. Seventh generation. No. Which

one does it fit? I don't know. Who's not? Is it Oh, Jason. Who do you think? Seventh generation. I'm the all-in presidential candidate by default. Um so I don't know. You're from Mount Olympus, though. Yes. Yeah. Um and the five points, but um how should immigration work in this country? You know, we've talked about it on our pod, the point-based system, etc. We still want immigration. We need highskilled immigration. We talked to President Trump about that. He said he was committed to giving people green cards who have diplomas. And this is a little out of your uh purview, but just how do you how does Antonio Gracios feel about immigration? You know, deporting people,

you know, deporting people with maybe less due process than maybe some of us are comfortable with. What do you think we should be doing here as a country? There's a lot in that question. So, look, I'm a enormous fan of immigration. I mean, I you will not find a guy who's more pro immigration than I am. Um because my parents are immigrants. um they came here with nothing and built a life and I am the American dream and I'm so grateful this country for my what it's done for my family you won't find it I am so grateful this country was it has been great for us okay um and for all of you the reality is that we need thank

[Music] [Applause] you American GDP is simply the function of number of people working times productivity we We have 7 million job openings roughly in America. We need people to work. Yes, this is this is the reality. The the system should very simply be there's a skilled immigration group and we figure out what that should be, what jobs you want. We and by the way, America is the best place to live in the world. We all know that. I believe that if we make this easy, uh they will come, right? No problem. And I think there's broad in that. We also need um labor. We do. Our farm, our farmers need labor, need labor in the food industry, restaurants, etc. I think

there should be both high-end skilled immigration, and there should be a very sensible program for unskilled labor, uh, a work permit program, and you we've got that H2A program. There there is an there is the H2A program. I will tell you, uh, these programs, I mapp the entire system now. Um, they go from DHS to State Department to labor. They're very disconnected and they're they're hard to manage. So, we are we are going to work on this. One of the things we're going to work on and hopefully leave behind is both a sensible answer to the illegal problem and a sensible answer to the legal problem. It's very important to the team working on this. They work

on this is like super important for Trump's administration because there seems to be a bit of a I don't want to call it a civil war, but heated debate internally between people like yourself and Elon and others who believe immigration is critical and then other people who just want to lock the border and deport 20 million people. Steve, I'll call the Steve Banning camp. He's not in the administration clearly. Locking the borders. I want to be clear on this something. I don't believe in open borders. Yeah. When a country opens it border, this country sees its sovereignty. Yes. You have you have to have a closer. You have to have a border that is control. Um that doesn't mean

you shouldn't have legal immigration, right? It should be it should be a proper process um where people can come in that are great for the country and they believe in our values and they should have a chance to become citizens if they believe in our values, support our country. I really hope that you guys work this out and can have a positive influence like you've had with Doge on the administration and really work on this one which is sensible, kind, you know, empathetic uh immigration. Y because you're all immigrants. I mean, the values I set for our team, I just tell you the valor execution values are focus, intensity, and discipline. I added a fourth value here to our team

for our team. Compassion. Yes. Antonio, I just want and I want anyone else to join me in saying, look, you're a successful, wealthy, um, incredibly handsome, handsome man. That's the best part. But, uh, like I I know the work you're doing super hard. We talked backstage about how hard it's been. I just want to honestly say as an American, thank you for the work you're doing. And well, thank you, bro. All right. Thanks to my friend Antonio Gracias for joining us and thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in for that important discussion about Doge. If you want to come to our next event, it's the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, fourth year for All-In Summit.

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