Trump Wants His Cabinet And Musk To Play Nice On Doge Cuts

President Donald Trump for more than a month has given Elon Musk free rein to drastically remake the federal bureaucracy.

This week, the president publicly lauded those efforts while privately trying to strike harmony between Musk and his Cabinet, which has been growing increasingly frustrated by the tech mogul’s incursions into their agencies.

The consternation reached a crescendo during a contentious Cabinet meeting on Thursday where Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins “came” for Musk, said a person with knowledge of the meeting who was granted anonymity to share private details. During the meeting, which was first reported Thursday by POLITICO, Trump made clear that it was his Cabinet secretaries, and not Musk, who are responsible for their departments.

The person said Rubio “jumped his shit” at Musk, while Duffy and Collins raised specific concerns about cuts within their agencies. Details of the confrontation between Rubio, Duffy and Collins and Musk were first reported by the New York Times. Rubio was incensed that Musk had distanced himself from the mass firings during a previous meeting with lawmakers, the person said.

Trump liked the show of toughness from his secretaries, the person said.

“Trump was very impressed. These guys who are pretty quiet got in [Musk’s] face and called him a liar in front of the president,” the person said, adding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also raised concerns to Trump about Musk prior to the Cabinet meeting. “He told Trump, this is out of control, with these emails he’s sending, these are real people, we’re not doing this.”

Anger over Musk’s power has been boiling for weeks in Washington as the billionaire tech mogul made blunt cuts to federal agency programs, slashed staff and threatened remaining employees into sending weekly emails with five things they accomplished, moves reminiscent of his approach when he took over Twitter, now called X. While Republicans on Capitol Hill and Trump’s Cabinet broadly support trimming what they view as a bloated federal bureaucracy — and polling shows that the majority of Americans agree with them — many have raised concerns about the way that Musk has gone about it. And even Musk has acknowledged he will make mistakes.

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, insisted that Rubio and Musk “get along fantastic” and that there was “no clash” between the two.

“Marco has done unbelievably as secretary of State,” he said. “And Elon is a unique guy and has done a fantastic job.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that "everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”

"As President Trump said, this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost cutting measures and staffing across the federal government," Leavitt added.

A Veterans Affairs spokesperson said the department is “working with DOGE and the rest of the administration” to “increase efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while keeping in place the best and most productive federal employees,” while a Transportation Department spokesperson pointed to Duffy’s post on X calling the meeting “productive.”

“The President's approach of a scalpel versus a hatchet and better coordination between Secretaries and DOGE is the right approach to revolutionizing the way our government is run,” Duffy wrote.

A spokesperson for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congressional Republicans have been under growing pressure as the cuts have started to hit their districts, and some have faced demands from their constituents at town halls to explain, or stop, the cuts.

GOP senators' complaints about DOGE had been percolating since at least Feb. 25, when Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled to reporters that he wanted Cabinet officials, not Musk, in charge of their departments: “I think that’s why we worked so hard to get these folks confirmed and they’re now in a position to make those decisions," Thune said.

The next day, several senators gave Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles an earful about DOGE at a private lunch in the Capitol. Wiles told senators to contact her directly if they were struggling to get answers, and many did. Several other senators were in communication with the White House, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the conversations

“These guys were bitching, ‘Why have we done all this heavy lifting on these confirmations, and this guy's running the thing? It's a black box. Nobody knows what's going on,’” the person with knowledge of the situation added..

Publicly, some members of Congress are taking a more conciliatory approach to Musk, acknowledging that they agree with his goals of slashing federal bureaucracy even if he has made mistakes along the way.

Speaker Mike Johnson praised Musk’s “pure motives” on Fox News on Friday and said he was among many lawmakers who have spoken with the billionaire.

“In Elon's defense, there is no playbook for what he's doing,” he added. “So as he acknowledged, there are gonna be some mishaps and mistakes along the way, but we will do course correction immediately.”

Johnson described the Thursday Musk-Cabinet meeting as a “recalibration” that will “formalize” his efforts.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told reporters after the Senate meeting Wednesday that Musk walked them through the process of the cuts and clarified that agencies are the ones who make the actual decisions, similar to the message Musk shared with House Republicans on Wednesday night.

“He was very consistent with what he's saying,” Scott said. “He has a team of people who really understand technology. They're going through and looking for anomalies where they can say, ‘Hey, does this make sense? Should we be spending money?’ And then the agency head makes the decision.”

Some Trump allies see the Thursday meeting as a natural evolution of a process that started when many Cabinet officials had yet to be confirmed.

“Now that Cabinet members are officially confirmed, having DOGE and Cabinet members work together is more great progress towards President Trump’s goal of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government,” said Jessica Anderson, president of the formerly Heritage Action-linked Sentinel Action Fund.

Trump’s effort to minimize Musk’s role came just two days after the president built him up, in a primetime address to Congress, as the mastermind of a new era of bureaucratic slashing. The shift in message also seems aimed at defusing the increasingly threatening legal challenges to DOGE’s operations.

It’s not clear that Trump’s comments have caused any change to Musk’s role in practice. Indeed, for weeks, Justice Department lawyers have been downplaying Musk’s role in court, telling judges that he is merely an “employee” with no formal decision-making power. But federal employee unions and organizations suing to stop DOGE say those efforts at minimization are a sleight of hand meant to obscure the reality of Musk’s work.

Judges have mounted increasingly pointed questions about the administration’s inability to characterize DOGE’s leadership. And the dozens of lawsuits challenging DOGE are nearing a new phase, known as discovery, in which administration officials or DOGE operatives may have to testify under oath about what, precisely, DOGE is up to — and on what authority.

Answers could be required soon. One federal judge in San Francisco ordered the federal government's top personnel officer to appear in court next week to discuss who ordered tens of thousands of firings of probationary federal employees. But the Trump administration has said it may fight the judge's order.

Norm Eisen, a lawyer who represents groups suing DOGE and Musk, believes Trump’s comments Thursday will carry little weight.

"The president is clearly feeling the heat after accidentally speaking the truth to Congress the other night: that Musk and DOGE have been calling the shots. That’s unconstitutional,” Eisen said. “Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted does no good. In fact, this attempted backtrack is an admission that the vast chaos that Mr. Musk and DOGE have wrought without proper approval and documentation is illegal."