Thursday, February 27, 2025 -President Donald Trump has told his Cabinet secretaries they will be 'thrown out' if they don't respect Elon Musk.
During his first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, February 26, Trump
praised Musk's efforts for leading DOGE, which claims to have saved
American taxpayers $65 billion by slashing jobs and programs.
Trump said Musk, who is 'tremendously successful' is sacrificing a lot
to head up the agency.
When asked by a member of the press about reports that some members of
Trump's Cabinet are displeased with Musk's power and DOGE's work, Trump
disputed it.
'Let the Cabinet speak for a second,' he fired back.
'Anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, we'll throw them out of here.
Anybody unhappy?' the president asked.
The Cabinet members including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and more all
shook their heads quickly.
The president went on to say his Cabinet has a 'lot of respect' for
Musk.
'Some disagree a little bit but for the most part, I think everyone is
not only happy, they're thrilled,' he added.
Musk added that Trump put together 'the best Cabinet ever,
literally.'
'I do not give false praise. This is an incredible group of people. I
don't think such a talented team has ever been assembled. It is literally the
best Cabinet the country has ever had and I think the country should be
appreciative of people in this room,' the South African-born billionaire
gushed.
This comes after CNN reported on Tuesday that Musk's tactics have
started to grate on Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress, citing a
number of unnamed sources.
Those frustrations were amplified when Musk sent out a directive to the
entire federal government to send an emailed response to the question, 'What
did you do last week?'
Cabinet heads and Congress weren't given a heads-up about Musk's mandate
- which threatened federal employees with termination if they didn't
respond.
Even a senior White House official, who refused to use their name,
divulged to CNN: 'A lot of agencies weren't given a heads up, which caused some
headaches.'
During Tuesday's briefing, Leavitt insisted
that 'nobody was caught off guard.'
'Did anonymous sources say that or did the Cabinet secretaries say
that?' she then said, challenging CNN's Jeff Zeleny.
Zeleny replied that Cabinet secretaries and others said they were not
aware that the Musk email was being sent and asked if there would be any 'give
and take' at the Cabinet meeting.
'Is Elon Musk or the president open to any type of dialogue about who is
actually in charge of the chain of command of these workers?' Zeleny
asked.
Leavitt said she rejected the premise of the question.
'The Cabinet secretaries have not said that. I know anonymous sources,
probably career bureaucrats, have leaked that to many of you in this room,' she
claimed.
'But as I said at the beginning of this press conference,
everybody is working as one team, and the president respects the decisions of
his Cabinet secretaries to tell their staff not to respond to that email
because they did so out of the interests of national security and they don't
want to, obviously, risk confidential information,' Leavitt added. 'It's pretty
common sense.'
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