United States President Donald Trump has held the first cabinet meeting of his second term, surrounded by allies like Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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”.
The majority of cabinet-level officials need Senate confirmation to join the presidential advisory panel. But critics have warned that Musk wields immense power over the Trump White House, without being elected or facing a Senate grilling.
After an opening prayer that thanked God for President Trump, Musk spoke to the reporters assembled for the cabinet meeting, offering a passionate defence of his work as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Trump also addressed the prospect of peace in Ukraine, the tariffs he plans to impose and mass layoffs within the federal workforce.
But key members of the international press, including reporters from The Associated Press, were barred from participating in the meeting, amid an ongoing feud over media freedom and the use of terms like “Gulf of Mexico“, which Trump objects to.
Here are some of the takeaways from their meeting.
Musk describes DOGE as ‘tech 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 an administration memo calling on federal departments and agencies to prepare to scale down their workforces. The federal government employs more than 2 million workers, many of whom are nonpartisan civil service members.
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.
“I actually just call myself humble tech support here because, as crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that the DOGE team is doing: helping to fix the government computer systems,” Musk said.
He then pivoted to DOGE’s more controversial functions: laying off workers, slashing federal spending and combing through vast amounts of government data.
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. They also accused DOGE of dismantling “critical public services” and serving 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.
Trump applauded Musk’s efforts during the meeting, repeating his calls for the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency to be slashed or eliminated.
“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.
“One of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola — Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored the Ebola prevention immediately,” he said.
Musk doubles down on controversial email threat
As part of the push to whittle down the federal workforce, Musk had announced on Saturday that federal employees were required to respond to an email with a five-point list of their accomplishments over the past week.
That email came with a tight deadline: Monday. And Musk warned that noncompliance would result in employee terminations.
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.”
Labour rights advocates have called the measure arbitrary and illegal. 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.”
The statement was similar to a previous false accusation Musk made about Social Security. He claimed that tens of millions of dead people were receiving Social Security cheques, due to an apparent misinterpretation of the COBOL programming language.
Still, Musk voiced further speculation on Wednesday that some federal employees may not have even existed in the first place.
“What we are trying to get to the bottom of is: We think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond, and some people who are not real people,” Musk said.
“Like, they’re literally fictional individuals that are collecting paycheques.”
Trump expands on ‘gold card’ idea
Trump, meanwhile, continued to advance a proposal to create an alternative to green cards, the identification documents given to lawful permanent residents of the US.
He has called his idea the “gold card”, and it would require prospective immigrants to pay the US government $5m.
On Wednesday, he announced that the proposed “gold card” would not only give immigrants the right to live and work in the US, but also serve as a fast track to citizenship
“It’s sort of a green card plus, and it’s a path to citizenship,” he said.
But critics have questioned whether the “gold card” proposal would be an avenue for fraud or whether it would function as an exclusionary device, providing immigration services only for the extremely wealthy.
Trump, however, argued on Wednesday that it would benefit talented workers from abroad. He outlined a vision where top technology companies like Apple would pay for foreign employees’ “gold cards”, comparing it to a signing bonus for athletes.
“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 speculated that the influx of wealth from the “gold cards” would not only help pay down the US debt but also bring job creation to 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,” he said.
“And I don’t know, maybe it will sell like crazy. I happen to think it’s going to sell like crazy. It’s a bargain.”
Trump raises ambiguity on timing of Mexico, Canada tariffs
Wednesday’s cabinet meeting took place as the US also hurdles towards a self-imposed deadline to place tariffs on two of its biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico.
Trump had threatened to impose 25-percent tariffs on the US neighbours even before taking office, as a means of pushing the two countries to tighten border restrictions. He cited fentanyl trafficking and irregular migration as motivation for the tariffs.
But after receiving concessions from both governments in early February, Trump delayed the imposition of the tariffs to March 4.
In Wednesday’s meeting, however, Trump stirred confusion over that deadline, saying the tariffs would instead arrive on April 2.
Lutnick, the commerce secretary, also hinted there could be further pauses on the tariffs if Canada and Mexico “can prove to the president they’ve done an excellent job”.
“They have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him to that regard,” Lutnick said.
Mexico has already committed 10,000 National Guard troops to patrol its border with the US, and Canada appointed a “fentanyl czar” to address drug trafficking, though only about 0.2 percent of fentanyl seizures happen at the Canadian border.
Still, Trump has used the threat of tariffs to also pressure Canada into ceding its sovereignty and becoming the 51st US state, a sentiment he repeated 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
Some of Trump’s final remarks came on the subject of the war in Ukraine, where Russia has pressed forward with a full-scale invasion since February 2022.
Trump reaffirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would come to the White House on Friday, in order to sign a deal that would guarantee US access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
“We’ll be really partnering with Ukraine in terms of rare Earth. We very much need rare Earth. They have great rare Earth,” he said, adding that the deal “brings us great wealth”.
But Trump refuted the idea that the deal would commit the US to providing Ukraine with security assistance, as it attempts to fend off Russia’s advances.
“Well, I’m not gonna make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re gonna have Europe do that,” Trump said.
He added that the presence of US citizens on Ukrainian soil could be a deterrent for future aggression.
“It’s a great deal for Ukraine too because they get us over there, and we’re going to be working over there. 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.
Throughout his second term so far, Trump has positioned himself as a peacemaker — but in both Ukraine and Gaza, he has attempted to assert US rights over land and resources.
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.
Despite his promises to restore world peace, Trump acknowledged at the meeting that he may not be able to deliver 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.
A journalist asked him afterwards if Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to make concessions as part of the peace negotiations.
“Yeah, he will. He’s gonna have to,” Trump replied.
Another journalist quickly asked what concessions the US president would like to see. But Trump used the question to pivot. Instead of answering, he once again blamed Ukraine for starting Russia’s invasion by seeking to join the NATO military alliance.
“NATO, you can forget about. I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started,” Trump said.