Elon Musk took a star turn at the primary Cabinet meeting of President Donald Trump’s new time period, holding forth in a black “Make America Great Again” marketing campaign hat on Wednesday (February 26, 2025) about his function as “humble tech support” for the federal authorities — and laying out dire stakes if his cost-cutting efforts fail.
“If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt,” Mr. Musk instructed division heads assembled round a big picket desk within the Cabinet Room.
Mr. Trump, not one to simply share the highlight, appeared glad to turn the highest of the hour-plus meeting over to Mr. Musk for a “little summary” of what the Department of Government Efficiency has been as much as, saying that Musk’s workforce had discovered proof of “horrible things” afoot within the authorities.
“He’s sacrificing a lot,” Mr. Trump mentioned of Mr. Musk, referencing the time the world’s richest man is taking away from his many enterprise ventures. “He’s additionally getting hit.”
Mr. Musk, for his part, said his lightning-fast efforts to right-size the government had drawn death threats and he jokingly knocked his fist on his “wooden head” as he said he hoped to find $1 trillion to trim from the federal budget, an effort that has caused extensive disruption among federal workers and those who rely on their services.
Musk on federal workers
Mr. Musk defended his weekend attempt to require government workers to justify their prior week’s work under penalty of termination — a move that drew pushback from many in the room on national security and privacy grounds — as merely a “pulse check” to ensure that those working for the government have “a pulse and two neurons,” including that “this isn’t a excessive bar” for staff to fulfill.
Speculating that some staff are both useless or fictional, Mr. Musk added that the purpose was to see that staff are actual, alive and can “write an email.”
Asked if members of the Cabinet have been proud of Mr. Musk, the DOGE guru began to reply the query. But Mr. Trump interjected and mentioned he may wish to let Cabinet members reply. Then Mr. Trump joked that if anybody disagreed, he may “throw them out.”
That drew applause from Cabinet members.
Mr. Trump then turned issues again to Mr. Musk, who mentioned the president had “put together, I think, the best Cabinet ever.”
“And I don’t give false praise,” he added.
Musk on USAID funding
Mr. Musk did volunteer that his efforts to slash authorities spending would “make mistakes.”
He cited for example that, whereas hustling to dramatically shrink the U.S. Agency for International Development, “One of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention.” Mr. Musk insisted that “there was no interruption” in providers earlier than the funding was restored.
But a USAID official mentioned on Wednesday that no funds for the company’s Ebola response had been launched beneath President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 funding freeze for international assist, together with for efforts to fight the unfold of the lethal virus.
After about quarter-hour of concentrate on Musk and DOGE, Trump shifted the highlight of the Cabinet meeting again to his personal accomplishments in his first weeks in workplace.
The Cabinet sat principally silently for greater than an hour, as Trump opened the ground to questions from an invited group of reporters.
Asked if he anticipated his Cabinet to comply with his directives with out exception, Trump initially scoffed at the query earlier than answering, “of course, no exceptions.”
Published – February 27, 2025 11:15 am IST
