Gillespie continues to disappoint, I just don't think he's a high-value intellect

The kid in the interview is being set up as a callous mastermind. He was given instructions to locate and remove DEI-flavored programs from USAID, and contrary to Nick's finger-wagging it does not take a do-nothing DC think tank nor a Reasoning midwit to distinguish these from the average USAID dross. Their titles bear the moniker proudly, and their summaries attest to diversity, equity, and inclusion repeatedly so as to remove all doubt. But, true to form, Nick accepts the framing of what he is given in terms of a hatchet job and works within it, already ceding the argument and ensuring even in his wildest dreams of power and agency, he is ineffective in moving the needle. The most important thing DOGE did was put their malfeasance on the news, and Gillespie just doesn't get that. He immediately jumps on the bandwagon and accepts the corporate media's spin that DOGE were know-nothing children and their judgement was the reason those programs deserved to stick around. Nick loudly illustrates why he and his group will never amount to a political anything, they're just a newsletter to tell fans re all the nowhere they're going and the power to effect change they don't have.

The guy's a 110 IQ, tops. Reason are a share of pearl-clutchers and get-alongs, a finish line for thumb-twirling critics and influence-free gadflies who wouldn't know a successful political strategy if it jumped out of the toilet and bit them in the ass

If Nick's idea is to shrink size and scope while making sure no bean counters nor beneficiaries lose their place at the government teat and no bad articles are written about them in the press, how does he figure his band of merry men at Reason are going to reduce deficit at all? He's just full of shit.