WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk took a star flip on the first Cupboard assembly of President Donald Trump’s new time period, holding forth in a black “Make America Nice Once more” marketing campaign hat on Wednesday about his function as “humble tech assist” for the federal authorities — and laying out dire stakes if his cost-cutting efforts fail.
“If we don’t do that, America will go bankrupt,” Musk advised division heads assembled round a big wood desk within the Cupboard Room.
Trump, not one to simply share the highlight, appeared pleased to show the highest of the hour-plus assembly over to Musk for a “little abstract” of what the Division of Authorities Effectivity has been as much as, saying that Musk’s workforce had discovered proof of “horrible issues” afoot within the authorities.
“He’s sacrificing lots,” Trump mentioned of Musk, referencing the time the world’s richest man is taking away from his many enterprise ventures. “He’s additionally getting hit.”
Musk, for his half, mentioned his lightning-fast efforts to right-size the federal government had drawn loss of life threats and he jokingly knocked his fist on his “wood head” as he mentioned he hoped to search out $1 trillion to trim from the federal price range, an effort that has brought about in depth disruption amongst federal staff and those that depend on their providers.
Musk defended his weekend try to require authorities staff to justify their prior week’s work below penalty of termination — a transfer that drew pushback from many within the room on nationwide safety and privateness grounds — as merely a “pulse examine” to make sure that these working for the federal government have “a pulse and two neurons,” including that “this isn’t a excessive bar” for staff to satisfy.
Speculating that some staff are both lifeless or fictional, Musk added that the aim was to see that staff are actual, alive and might “write an e mail.”
Requested if members of the Cupboard had been proud of Musk, the DOGE guru began to reply the query. However Trump interjected and mentioned he would possibly need to let Cupboard members reply. Then Trump joked that if anybody disagreed, he would possibly “throw them out.”
That drew applause from Cupboard members.
Trump then turned issues again to Musk, who mentioned the president had “put collectively, I feel, one of the best Cupboard ever.”
“And I don’t give false reward,” he added.
Musk did volunteer that his efforts to slash authorities spending would “make errors.”
He cited for instance that, whereas hustling to dramatically shrink the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement, “One of many issues we unintentionally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention.” Musk insisted that “there was no interruption” in providers earlier than the funding was restored.
However a USAID official mentioned Wednesday that no funds for the company’s Ebola response had been launched below President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 funding freeze for overseas assist, together with for efforts to fight the unfold of the lethal virus.
After about quarter-hour of deal with Musk and DOGE, Trump shifted the highlight of the Cupboard assembly again to his personal accomplishments in his first weeks in workplace.
The Cupboard sat largely silently for greater than an hour, as Trump opened the ground to questions from an invited group of reporters.
Requested if he anticipated his Cupboard to comply with his directives with out exception, Trump initially scoffed on the query earlier than answering, “in fact, no exceptions.”
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