Musk Gets Star Turn At Trump’s Cabinet Meeting | EUROtoday
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk took a star flip on the first Cabinet assembly of President Donald Trump’s new time period, holding forth in a black “Make America Great Again” marketing campaign hat on Wednesday about his position 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,” Musk instructed division heads assembled round a big wood desk within the Cabinet Room.
Trump, not one to simply share the highlight, appeared joyful to show the highest of the hour-plus assembly over to Musk for a “little summary” of what the Department of Government Efficiency has been as much as, saying that Musk’s staff had discovered proof of “horrible things” afoot within the authorities.
“He’s sacrificing a lot,” Trump mentioned of Musk, referencing the time the world’s richest man is taking away from his many enterprise ventures. “He’s also getting hit.”
Musk, for his half, mentioned his lightning-fast efforts to right-size the federal government had drawn dying threats and he jokingly knocked his fist on his “wooden head” as he mentioned he hoped to seek out $1 trillion to trim from the federal price range, an effort that has triggered in depth disruption amongst federal employees and people who depend on their providers.
Musk defended his weekend try and require authorities employees to justify their prior week’s work underneath penalty of termination — a transfer that drew pushback from many within the room on nationwide safety and privateness grounds — as merely a “pulse check” to make sure that these working for the federal government have “a pulse and two neurons,” including that “this is not a high bar” for employees to satisfy.
Speculating that some employees are both lifeless or fictional, Musk added that the purpose was to see that employees are actual, alive and may “write an email.”
Asked if members of the Cabinet have been proud of Musk, the DOGE guru began to reply the query. But Trump interjected and mentioned he would possibly wish to let Cabinet members reply. Then Trump joked that if anybody disagreed, he would possibly “throw them out.”
That drew applause from Cabinet members.
Trump then turned issues again to Musk, who mentioned the president had “put together, I think, the best Cabinet ever.”
“And I don’t give false praise,” he added.
Musk did volunteer that his efforts to slash authorities spending would “make mistakes.”
He cited for instance 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.” Musk insisted that “there was no interruption” in providers earlier than the funding was restored.
But a USAID official mentioned Wednesday that no funds for the company’s Ebola response had been launched underneath 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 assembly again to his personal accomplishments in his first weeks in workplace.
The Cabinet sat largely 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 on the query earlier than answering, “of course, no exceptions.”
AP Writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-trump-musk-cabinet-meeting_n_67bfe537e4b00e46454b76ee