by US President Donald Trump called a meeting of his cabinet secretaries on Thursday to discuss Elon Musk and his efforts to defeat government spending and the number of staff.
It was heated, according to media reports.
Musk accused State Secretary Marco Rubio of not cutting sufficient staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reports the New York Times.
The Tech -Mogul told Rubio that he was “good on TV”, according to the newspaper, emphatically skipped every praise for his work as the best diplomat in America.
The billionaire also clashed with transport secretary Sean Duffy about whether Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) Task Force had tried to dismiss air traffic controllers who were scarce in the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the New York Times.
The Duffy department was examined after two American airline crashes took office since Trump in January.
After listening to the back and forth, the Republican president reportedly intervened to make it clear that he was still supporting DOGE, but from now on the cabinet secretaries would be in charge and the Musk team would only advise.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Rubio newspaper thought that the cabinet meeting was an “open and productive discussion”. The White House did not respond to BBC requests for further comments.
The hastily planned meeting can provide evidence that the president has decided to limit the radical force that the SpaceX and Tesla boss and his doge cost-cutting initiative have ordered in the early weeks of his administration.
Trump commented for the first time on the content of the Thursday meeting, which was only announced in Na-de-Fact Media reports, via a post that evening on his social media site, Truth Social.
He said he had instructed his secretaries to work with Doge on “cost -saving measures”.
“Like the secretaries learn about and understand, the people who work for the different departments, they can be very accurate about who will stay and who will go,” he wrote, adding that they should not use a “scalpel”.
ReutersOnly a few weeks ago, Musk used a shiny chainsaw at a conservative conference – a visible symbol of aggressive attempts to defeat the government spending that made the Democrats angry and some officials in the Trump government.
The Musk team had sent several e -mails from an official government account to millions of federal employees, and encouraged them to accept months of advance in exchange for their dismissal.
Federal employees were instructed to provide bills of their weekly performance or risk rods – a request that some agencies instructed their employees to ignore.
Doge also ordered the dismissal of many newly adopted government employees who, because of their “probationary period” status, had no complete protection of the officials.
Some government agencies have since withdrawn these orders because employees were considered essential, such as those who supervise the safety of nuclear weapons were affected.
During an Oval Office event on Friday, Trump responded to questions about the cabinet meeting – and reports about the heated fairs. He insisted that there was “no collision”. He praised both Rubio and Musk and said that the two could get along with each other “great”.
Trump’s on Thursday Truth Social Post seems to give the department heads more authority to push back against Musk.
It can also be an attempt to isolate the Trump administration from lawsuits who claim that Musk uses too much power for someone who, unlike cabinet secretaries, is not subject to assessment and confirmation of the Senate.
Various federal judges who supervise these cases have all their concern about the authority of Musk – concerns that can be further fed by Trump’s comments during his speech to the congress on Tuesday that the billionaire was in fact the man who was responsible for Doge.
Musk and Trump have so far formed a formidable partnership – as the richest man in the world and the most powerful politician in America. Washington has been full of speculation for months about whether that partnership could ultimately break.
However, those predictions are usually followed by renewed signs of comity between the two men.
On Friday evening, Musk was seen on board Air Force One with the president for a flight to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago house in Florida for the weekend.
The cabinet room is perhaps the first crack in the foundation but there is sufficient evidence that Trump still supports the wider efforts and goals of Musk, even if he may prefer that he is using a scalpel in the coming days, not a chain saw.
