WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet secretaries for the first meeting of his new term on Wednesday, a tableful of big personalities largely sat and watched as the main character of the early Trump administration took center stage once more.
The group, which included nominees who haven't yet been confirmed, was also joined by Elon Musk, whose early actions to reshape the federal bureaucracy have stoked rancor and unease among government employees, as well as early murmurs of concern among some Republicans in Congress.
The agency leaders are all working to implement Trump's agenda at a spitfire pace — but it's Trump's billionaire adviser who is in front of the cameras and getting significant credit from Trump, and heat from elsewhere, for some of the defining actions of Trump's first month back in the White House.
“He’s sacrificing a lot,” Trump said as he introduced Musk. “He’s getting a lot of praise, I’ll tell you, but he’s also getting hit.”
Trump's first Cabinet meeting outlined the hierarchy in his administration, with many of his Senate-confirmed department heads spending an hour as audience members after the president gave the floor to Musk at the top of the meeting.
Trump's secretaries watched as Musk, standing at the edge of a long table, explained DOGE and its work as “a support function for the president and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings to effectively find 15% reduction in fraud and waste."
"And we bring the receipts,” Musk added. He argued the efforts were a necessary check on federal spending and a deficit he said the country could not sustain.
Musk’s efforts have prompted resistance from some Cabinet secretaries, including several who recently instructed staff to put aside a directive coming from Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency that required a five-point response to the question, “What did you do last week?”
After the instruction landed in federal inboxes over the weekend, department and agency directors for the Justice, Defense and State Departments and the FBI began fending off the push, despite Trump and Musk’s suggestions that those who didn’t respond risked being fired.
The Saturday night email, Musk insisted, was simply a "pulse check," not a performance review. Still, he conceded, DOGE "will make mistakes."
Invited to ask questions of Musk, one reporter wondered why Trump had felt the need early Wednesday to declare that his Cabinet stood behind his cost-cutting ally. Had Musk heard anything about members of the Cabinet who weren't pleased with his directives?
“ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Media will see that at the Cabinet Meeting this morning!!!”
“Is anybody unhappy?” Trump asked the room, which broke out in applause. “I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled.”
Musk praised the group assembled as “literally the best.”
While not a member of Trump’s Cabinet, Musk has been near omnipresent by the president’s side since he was elected last year, appearing frequently with him at the new president’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where he joined meetings with senior advisers and other leaders. The close relationship between the two now appears as strong as ever, with Trump describing Musk's demand as “genius” during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and saying employees who did not respond to the weekend email would be “semi-fired” or “fired.”
Trump later called the order from Musk “somewhat voluntary,” after Musk on Monday insisted that a non-response could lead to “termination.”
The meeting on Wednesday threatened to showcase a potentially fraught dynamic between the leaders of Trump's government agencies and the billionaire tycoon looking to make major cuts to their staff. Until this weekend, the leaders had embraced Musk's directives publicly. But Trump, who has praised Musk’s slash-and-burn efforts, maintained on Wednesday morning that each voice in his Cabinet remains aligned behind Musk.
Defending Musk's email throughout the meeting, Trump indicated that federal workers who failed to respond could lose their jobs.
"Those people are on the bubble, as they say," Trump said. "You know, maybe they’re going to be gone, maybe they’re not around, maybe they have other jobs, maybe they moved and they’re not where they’re supposed to be."
Later, he added, "it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired."
Most Cabinet secretaries said little as Trump took questions from reporters, though a few stepped in with comments. Trump punted a question about a recent measles outbreak in Texas to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who has clashed with the medical establishment over his stance.
“We’re going to continue to follow it,” Kennedy said of the outbreak that has so far killed one person and he said had hospitalized about 20. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country; last year there were 16, so it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
The measles death was the first in the U.S. since 2015 and the first measles death of a child in the U.S. since 2003, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And Trump invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to speak about an idea for an immigration “gold card” that the president introduced Tuesday.
Taking questions from reporters, Trump also said of Ukraine that his presidency could halt the war there and stop Russian President Vladimir Putin, who "wanted the whole thing."
And Trump railed against the Biden administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, musing about how he wanted to “get back” military equipment abandoned by American forces. Trump added that he was not surprised Russia invaded Ukraine amid the fallout.
“In all fairness to Putin, when he saw that, he said, Well, this is our time to go, and go into Ukraine, I guess,” Trump said.
