Key takeaways from Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting with Elon Musk

The first cabinet meeting of his second term was held by US President Donald Trump, who was accompanied by Marco Rubio and Howard Lutnick, the country’s top trade minister.

But one guest was arguably the most controversial: billionaire Elon Musk.

Throughout the public portion of Wednesday’s meeting, Musk stood to the side of the cabinet’s oblong table, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “tech support”.

Senate approval is required for the membership of the presidential advisory panel, which is typically the case for cabinet-level officials. However, critics have cautioned that Musk, who did not win the Senate or face a hearing, has a lot of power over the Trump White House.

Musk addressed the cabinet meeting’s reporters after a opening prayer in which he praised God for President Trump and defended his position as director of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Trump also addressed the tariffs he intends to impose, the possibility of peace in Ukraine, and massive federal workforce layoffs.

In light of Trump’s objections to using terms like “Gulf of Mexico” and ongoing conflict over press freedom, key members of the international press, including reporters from The Associated Press, were the meeting prohibited from taking part.

What can we learn from their meeting, if necessary?

Musk refers to DOGE as “tech support.”

One of the first advisers to speak at the cabinet meeting was Donald Musk, who donned a black “Make America Great Again” cap.

His remarks came shortly after a memo from the administration urging federal departments and agencies to prepare for workforce reduction. More than 2 million people work for the federal government, a large portion of whom are nonpartisan civil servants.

To start, Musk tried to play down DOGE’s role in the government, saying it was primarily tasked with updating government technology.

On the first day of his second term, Trump replaced the US Digital Service, a technology office, with DOGE, which absorbed its workers.

According to Musk, “I actually just call myself humble tech support here because, as crazy as it sounds, that almost sums up the work that the DOGE team is doing: fixing the government computer systems.”

He then switched to one of DOGE’s more contentious tasks: cutting federal spending, analyzing massive amounts of government data, and firing employees.

Earlier this week, a group of 21 DOGE employees resigned en masse, warning that the department’s functions were putting sensitive data security at risk. Additionally, they charged DOGE with carrying out “critical public services” and supporting an ideological agenda.

But Musk argued on Wednesday that DOGE’s actions were necessary to reduce the country’s deficit.

He added that he was “confident” that DOGE could find “a trillion dollars in savings”. As of fiscal year 2024, the US government spent $6.75 trillion.

“If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done”, he said.

During the meeting, Trump praised Musk’s efforts, repeating his demands for the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education.

“I   spoke with Lee Zeldin”, Trump said, referring to his hand-picked environment secretary. “And he thinks he’s gonna be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from Environmental, and we’re going to speed up the process, too”.

“We had a lot of people that weren’t doing their job”, Trump added. “They were just obstructionists”.

Still, Musk acknowledged the DOGE team had made some errors in judgement, though he promised to fix any mistakes quickly.

Ebola — Ebola prevention was one of the things we unintentionally cancelled very briefly. I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored the Ebola prevention immediately”, he said.

Musk backs down on a controversial email threat.

Musk had made the announcement on Saturday that federal employees were required to respond to an email with a five-point list of their accomplishments over the past week as part of the effort to reduce the number of federal employees.

That email came with a tight deadline: Monday. And Musk cautioned against a termination of employees as a result of noncompliance.

Instantly, Musk’s threat sowed confusion and uproar in the government, with some agencies advising their employees to ignore it altogether. Eventually, the government backed away from the Monday deadline.

But Musk has since renewed the threat, writing on his social media platform, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they]federal employees] will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination”.

The measure has been criticized as arbitrary and illegal by labor rights advocates. Musk, however, raised unfounded speculation at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting that employees who do not respond may be dead.

“I think that email perhaps was misinterpreted as a performance review, but actually, it was a pulse check review”, Musk said, chuckling. “Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two neurons? If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email”.

Similar to a previous false allegation about Social Security, Musk made this statement. He claimed that a blatant misinterpretation of the COBOL programming language led to the distribution of Social Security checks to tens of millions of dead people.

Musk continued to speculate on Wednesday that some federal employees might not have even been there.

We are trying to understand why there are many people on the government payroll who are dead, and some who aren’t even real people, Musk said.

“Like, they’re literally fictional individuals that are collecting paycheques”.

Trump expands on ‘ gold card ‘ idea

Trump, in contrast, kept pushing for a plan to provide legal permanent residents of the US with identification documents in place of green cards.

His proposal would require potential immigrants to pay US$5 million, as he has referred to it as the “gold card.”

He made the announcement on Wednesday that the proposed “gold card” would serve as a “fast track” to citizenship and would grant immigrants the right to reside and work in the US.

“It’s sort of a green card plus, and it’s a path to citizenship”, he said.

However, some people have questioned whether the “gold card” proposal would offer opportunities for fraud or if it would serve as an exclusionary device, offering immigration services only to the very wealthy.

Trump, however, argued on Wednesday that it would benefit talented workers from abroad. He compared the “gold cards” of top technology companies like Apple to an athlete signing bonus.

“Apple or one of the companies will go out, and maybe they’ll buy five of them, and they’re going to get five people”, he said.

Trump also questioned whether the “gold cards”’ would help to reduce US debt and create more jobs in the US economy.

“I will tell you, the people that can pay $5m, they’re going to create jobs. They’re going to spend a lot of money on jobs. They’re going to have to pay taxes on that, too. So they’re going to be hiring people. They’re going to be bringing people in and companies in”, he said.

“And I don’t know, maybe it will sell like crazy. I have a feeling that it will sell like a hot rod. It’s a bargain”.

Trump raises ambiguity on timing of Mexico, Canada tariffs

The US is also attempting to pass a self-imposed deadline to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, two of its biggest trading partners. On Wednesday, the cabinet met.

Before taking office, Trump had threatened to impose 25% tariffs on US neighbors as a means of escalating border security tensions between the two nations. He cited irregular migration and fentanyl trafficking as reasons for the tariffs.

Trump, however, delayed the imposition of the tariffs until March 4 after receiving concessions from both governments in the first half of February.

In Wednesday’s meeting, however, Trump stirred confusion over that deadline, saying the tariffs would instead arrive on April 2.

If Canada and Mexico “can demonstrate to the president they’ve done an excellent job,” Lutnick, the commerce secretary, added that there might be additional tariff pauses.

“They have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him to that regard”, Lutnick said.

Although only 0.2% of fentanyl seizures occur at the Canadian border, Mexico has already dispatched 10, 000 National Guard troops to patrol its border with the US. Canada has also appointed a “fentanyl czar” to combat drug trafficking.

Trump hasn’t stopped himself from imposing tariffs on Canada, saying he repeated his position on Wednesday.

“I say Canada should be our 51st state. There’s no tariffs, no nothing. And I say that we give them military protection. They have a very small military”, he said.

“We protect Canada. But it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re not paying their way. And if they had to pay their way, they couldn’t exist”.

Trump asserts Russia will make concessions

Trump’s final remarks touched on the Ukraine war, which Russia has been waging since February 2022.

Trump reiterated that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, would visit the White House on Friday to sign a deal that would grant the US access to the country’s rare earth minerals.

“We’ll really work together with Ukraine on rare earth.” We very much need rare Earth. They have great rare Earth”, he said, adding that the deal “brings us great wealth”.

Trump’s contention that the deal would obligate the US to provide security to Ukraine would be refuted by Trump.

“Well, I’m not gonna make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re gonna have Europe do that”, Trump said.

He added that Ukrainians might not be as hostile as Americans are when they are present on Ukrainian soil.

“They get us there, and we’re going to be working there, so it’s a great deal for Ukraine as well.” We’ll be on the land. And you know, in that way, there’s sort of automatic security because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there”, he said.

Trump has attempted to assert US rights over land and resources throughout his second term so far, but has done so in both Ukraine and Gaza.

In the case of Gaza, Trump has repeatedly suggested that the US could “take over” and “own” the war-torn territory, permanently displacing its Palestinian residents.

On Wednesday, before the cabinet meeting, his social media account even released an artificial intelligence-generated video, showing Gaza turned into a Trump-themed resort.

Trump acknowledged at the meeting that despite his assurances that he would not be able to bring about world peace, in the case of Ukraine.

“I can’t guarantee that. You know, a deal is a deal. Lots of crazy things happen in deals, right? But I think we’re gonna have a deal”, he said.

After that, a journalist inquired whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would need to offer concessions during the peace negotiations.

“Yeah, he will. He’s gonna have to”, Trump replied.

Another journalist posed the question “what concessions” the US president wants. Trump, however, pivoted from the question. Instead of answering, he once again blamed Ukraine for starting Russia’s invasion by seeking to join the NATO military alliance.

Source: Aljazeera