President Donald Trump held the first cabinet meeting of his second term, surrounded by allies such as Secretary Commerce Howard Rutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
But one guest was undoubtedly the most controversial: billionaire Elon Musk.
Throughout the public section of Wednesday’s meeting, Mask stood on the side of a rectangular table in the cabinet, wearing a T-shirt decorated with the phrase “technical support.”
The majority of cabinet-level officials require a Senate confirmation to join the Presidential Advisory Committee. But critics warn Musk that he will wield a great deal of strength on the Trump White House without being elected to the Senate grill or facing the Senate grill.
After an opening prayer thanking President Trump to God, Musk spoke with reporters gathered for the Cabinet meeting, providing government efficiency, or passionate defense of his work as head of the Doge Department.
Trump also tackled the prospect of peace in Ukraine, the tariffs and massive layoffs he plans to impose, among the federal labor force.
However, key members of international press, including Associated Press reporters, were banned from attending conferences amid continuing feuds over media freedom and the use of terms like “Gulf of Mexico.”
Here are some takeaways from their meetings.
Musk describes Doge as “technical support”
Dressed in his black “Make America Great Again” cap, Musk was one of the first advisers to speak at the Cabinet meeting.
His remarks came within hours of a management memo asking federal departments and agencies to prepare to reduce their workforce. The federal government employs more than 2 million workers, many of whom are nonpartisan civil servants.
First, Musk said he was trying to play the role of Doge in the government, primarily responsible for updating government technology.
On the first day of his second term, Trump replaced the Technology Office in place of Doge, who absorbed workers.
“I actually call it humble technical support here, because it’s so crazy that it sounds like it, and that’s pretty much a literal explanation of the work the Doge team is doing. It helps to fix the government’s computer systems.”
He then pivoted into Doge’s more controversial features. They fired workers, reduced federal spending, and looked at huge amounts of government data.
Earlier this week, a group of 21 Doge employees resigned from a massive resignation, warning that departmental functions are at stake to jeopardize sensitive data security. They also accused Doge of dismantling “critical public services” and providing an ideological agenda.
But Musk on Wednesday argued that Doge’s actions were necessary to reduce the country’s deficit.
He added that Doge is “confidence” when it can find “a trillion dollar savings.” As of 2024, the US government had spent $6.75 trillion.
“If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt, and that’s why we have to do that,” he said.
Trump praised masks’ efforts during the meeting, repeatedly calling the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency to cut or eliminate them.
“I spoke to Lee Zeldin,” Trump said. “And he thinks he’ll cut about 65% of people out of the environment. We’re going to speed up the process too.”
“We had a lot of people who didn’t work,” Trump added. “They were just occlusionists.”
Still, Musk admitted that the Doge team had made some mistakes in their judgment, but he promised to quickly correct the mistake.
“One of the things we accidentally cancelled so easily is Ebola-Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we quickly recovered from Ebola prevention,” he said.
Musk doubles the controversial email threat
As part of a push to cut the federal workforce, Musk announced on Saturday that federal employees should respond to emails containing a five-point list of last week’s achievements.
The email had a tight deadline of Monday. And Musk warned that non-compliance would lead to employee termination.
Immediately, the mask threat sowed government confusion and uproars, with some agencies advised employees to ignore them completely. Ultimately, the government recedes from its Monday deadline.
But Musk later updated the threat by writing on his social media platform. A second response fails to cause an termination. ”
Work rights advocates call this scale arbitrary and illegal. But Musk raised unfounded speculation at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that unresponsive employees could be dead.
“I think the email was probably misunderstood as a performance review, but in fact it was a pulse check review,” Musk said with a laugh. “Are there pulses? Are there pulses and two neurons? If there’s pulses and two neurons, I can reply to the email.”
The statement resembles the previous false accusations Musk made about Social Security. He claimed that tens of millions of deaths have been undergoing Social Security Checks due to obvious misunderstandings of the COBOL programming language.
Still, Musk expressed further speculation Wednesday that some federal employees may not have existed in the first place.
“It’s IS that we’re trying to get to the bottom. I think there are a lot of people in government salaries that are dead. That’s probably why they can’t handle it, and some aren’t real people,” Musk said.
“For example, they are literally fictional individuals, collecting wages.”
Playing cards are expanding the idea of ”gold cards”
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to pursue proposals to create an alternative to the Green Card, an identification document given to legitimate permanent residents of the United States.
He calls his idea a “gold card” and needs future immigrants to pay the US government $5 million.
On Wednesday, he announced that the proposed “gold card” would not only give immigrants the right to live and work in the United States, but also serve as a fast path to citizenship.
“It’s kind of a green card plus and a path to citizenship,” he said.
However, critics have questioned whether the “gold card” proposal is a means of fraud or whether it acts as an exclusive device and provides immigration services only to very wealthy people.
But Trump on Wednesday claimed it would benefit talented workers from overseas. He outlined his vision for top technology companies like Apple to pay for “gold cards” for foreign employees, and compared it to athletes’ signature bonuses.
“Apple or one company might go out and they might buy five people. They’ll get five,” he said.
Trump also speculated that wealth inflows from the “gold card” would not only help repay US debt, but would also create job creation for the US economy.
“People who can pay $5 million, they’ll create jobs. They’re going to spend a lot of money on the job, and they’ll have to pay taxes on that too,” he said.
“And I don’t know, maybe it’s going to sell like crazy. I just happen to think it’s going to sell like crazy. It’s a bargain.”
Trump causes ambiguity in the Mexican timing of Canadian tariffs
A cabinet meeting took place on Wednesday as the US is hurdles towards a voluntary deadline for placing tariffs on its two biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico.
Trump had threatened to impose a 25% tariff on US neighbours, even before he took office as a way to push both countries to tighten border restrictions. He cited fentanyl trafficking and irregular migration as motives for tariffs.
However, after receiving concessions from both governments in early February, Trump delayed the imposition of tariffs until March 4th.
However, at Wednesday’s meeting, Trump caused confusion over the deadline and said instead that tariffs would arrive on April 2.
Commerce Secretary Lutnick also suggested that if Canada and Mexico can “prove the president that they did a great job,” they could have a further pause on tariffs.
“They have to prove to the president that they have satisfied him in that respect,” Rutnick said.
Mexico has already committed to protecting its border with the US, and Canada has appointed “Emperor Fentanyl” to deal with drug trafficking, but only about 0.2% of fentanyl attacks have occurred at the Canadian border.
Still, Trump used the tariff threat to hand over its sovereignty to Canada and put pressure on him to become the 51st US state.
“We say Canada should be our 51st province. There are no tariffs or anything. And we say we give them military protection. They have a very small army,” he said.
“We protect Canada, but that’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 claims Russia will make concessions
Some of Trump’s final remarks stem from the subject of the war in Ukraine, where Russia has been moving forward with a full-scale invasion since February 2022.
Trump reaffirmed that Ukrainian President Voldy Meezelensky will be coming to the White House on Friday to sign a contract that guarantees access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
“We are really affiliated with Ukraine in terms of rare earths. Rare earths are very necessary. They have a big rare earth,” he said, adding that the deal “provides us with great wealth.”
But Trump has rebutted the idea that the deal would commit to the US to provide security assistance to Ukraine in an attempt to avoid Russia’s progress.
“Well, I’m not going to make much security guarantees. I’m going to let Europe do that,” Trump said.
He added that the presence of US citizens in Ukrainian soil could be a deterrent to future attacks.
“Even for Ukraine, they’re taking us there and we’re going to work there. We’re on the land. And you know there’s a kind of automatic security because in that way, no one’s going to mess with our people when we’re there,” he said.
Throughout his second term so far, Trump has positioned himself as a peace manager, but in both Ukraine and Gaza he has sought to assert the US rights to land and resources.
In Gaza, Trump repeatedly suggests that the United States can “take over” and “own” war-torn territory, banishing Palestinian residents forever.
On Wednesday, prior to the cabinet meeting, his social media accounts released a video generated by artificial intelligence, indicating that Gaza had been transformed into a Trump-themed resort.
Despite his promise to restore world peace, Trump admitted at the meeting that it may not be delivered in the case of Ukraine.
“I can’t guarantee that. You know, trading is a transaction. There’s a lot of crazy things happening with great deals, right? But I think we’re going to do it,” he said.
The journalist asked him whether Russian President Vladimir Putin must make concessions as part of the peace talks.
“Yeah, he’ll do that. He’ll have to,” Trump replied.
Another journalist immediately asked what concessions the US president wanted to make. But Trump used this question to pivot. Instead of responding, he once again denounced Ukraine for starting a Russian invasion in search of participation in the NATO military alliance.
“NATO, you can forget, that’s probably why it all started,” Trump said.