Trump’s cupboard conferences present simply how highly effective Elon Musk has turn into | EUROtoday

It’s commonplace for Donald Trump’s conferences to conclude with spontaneous bursts of applause from his underlings. It is uncommon for that applause to be directed at anybody however Trump himself.

In entrance of the gathered press after a cupboard assembly on Monday, it was Elon Musk on the receiving finish of the sycophancy. It got here after a prolonged tribute from Trump himself, who singled out the “senior advisor” and DOGE figurehead for reward.

“Elon, I want to thank you. I know you’ve been through a lot with this horrible situation that happened. Very unfair. What he is is a patriot … He’s become a friend of mine,” Trump stated, earlier than threatening horrible penalties for anybody who harms a Tesla.

As Trump spoke, Musk wore a hat emblazoned with the phrases “Trump was right about everything.” He sat at a desk alongside a number of the strongest individuals within the nation with a spot setting bearing solely his identify. No title was wanted, apparently.

“He’s a patriot more than anything else. He has never asked me for a thing he could have. I always say, I wonder if he’s ever going to ask me for something, and that’s always subject to change, and if it does change, I’ll let you know about it,” Trump added about Musk, who at the moment heads SpaceX, one of many largest federal contractors, which was awarded $3.8bn in authorities spending commitments final 12 months.

Trump’s feedback had been adopted by a prolonged spherical of applause from the cupboard as JD Vance, the vice chairman president and forgotten failson of the West Wing, seemed on.

But the applause was solely the finale of a drawn-out Musk-fest that confirmed simply how a lot energy and affect the billionaire now instructions within the White House and past, reaching into each division of the US authorities.

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Almost each cupboard minister heaped reward on Musk and his mission to chop authorities spending, and every of them in flip targeted their remarks on what they’d completed to fulfill the calls for of the senior advisor and his group.

His mission has now turn into the mission of the federal government.

It started with secretary of the inside Doug Burgum, a person chargeable for the nation’s huge federal lands, who boasted in regards to the “many fraudulent contracts that were caught by the work that Elon and his people are doing.”

Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, introduced proudly that she had “canceled a $300,000 contract educating on food justice for queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco,” and a “$600,000 contract out of Louisiana that was studying the menstrual cycles of transgender men,” casting a watch and a smile in direction of Musk.

Many of the claims made by DOGE and its admirers have later turned out to be false, however Rollins rattled off her numbers secure within the data that fact-checkers don’t have any quarter within the cupboard room.

It was at this level that Musk spoke up. He supplied his personal ridiculous declare that the small enterprise administration had given $330m in loans to youngsters beneath the age of 11, together with a $100,000 mortgage to a 9-month-old child.

And on it went across the desk. Almost each cupboard member, every with their very own duties and objectives and goals and designs, all appeared to be laser-focused on praising the work of Musk’s DOGE.

That is sort of as stunning as Musk’s earlier declare that DOGE had discovered 150-year-olds claiming social safety advantages — a declare that was later debunked.

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Lee Zeldin, the top of the Environmental Protection Agency, was subsequent, claiming to have minimize $22 billion value of contracts.

“The partnership with DOGE and Elon Musk has been incredible at EPA. Their team is very talented. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them,” he added.

Even Robert F Kennedy Jr, maybe essentially the most ideological particular person in your complete cupboard, who was picked exactly due to his deeply entrenched views on how you can make Americans wholesome once more, selected to ramble about cost-cutting the well being division’s IT expenditures.

“We are, with Elon’s help, eliminating the redundancies. We are streamlining our department. We’re going to go back to providing gold-standard science. We’re going to get the money to the scientists and to the patients, rather than to the administrators and to the bureaucrats,” he stated.

Given all the huge waste and fraud uncovered by Musk and his minions, it should be no small embarrassment for Trump’s lawyer normal, Pam Bondi, to have did not convey any prosecutions for all of those alleged offenses.

In lieu of subpoenas, she supplied a phrase salad.

“As far as the… we are hearing a lot about fraud, waste and abuse. A lot of waste and abuse, but there is a tremendous amount of fraud and Elon, thank you for your partnership. Thank you for your team. You have uncovered so much fraud in our government, and we will prosecute you,” she stated, by chance threatening the world’s richest man.

“We have an internal Task Force now working with every agency, sitting here at this table, and if you’ve committed fraud, we’re coming after you. Thank you, Elon, for that,” she went on.

The assembly was proof, if anybody wanted it, of Musk’s ever-growing energy.

He now instructions big affect over not simply the White House, however over each US authorities division. He has a public megaphone with maybe as a lot affect as Fox News on the top of its energy and a military of minions with carte blanche to raid any authorities division and begin trying beneath the floorboards.

And he has already proven a willingness to throw his weight round. Secretary of state Marco Rubio reportedly discovered the exhausting method when Musk admonished him at a cupboard assembly earlier this month for not firing sufficient individuals. In entrance of Trump and your complete cupboard, he advised Rubio disparagingly that he was “good on TV.”

In that method, Musk now fills the same position to Trump. Some within the cupboard might admire him, however all worry him.