Has Donald Trump crops Elon Musk? This is the scene that the New York Times on the occasion of a rare council of ministers, organized Thursday, March 6 in the cabinet hall of the White House. During the meeting, the exchange would have turned short between the billionaire and a secretary of state. Not just any: Marco Rubio, the head of American diplomacy and faithful of the early hour of Donald Trump, who would have defended it. “There was no confrontation. I was there,” the president quickly swept away. Despite the denial, this hanging marks, in the eyes of the English -speaking media, a broader will of the Republican to limit the exponential power of Elon Musk within his government.
The meeting in question had been summoned the day for the next day by Donald Trump to discuss Elon Musk’s efforts, a new minister responsible for government efficiency (DOGE) responsible for cutting the workforce in all government agencies to drastically reduce administration expenses. What announced as a discussion quickly turned to the duel, according to the American daily, when Elon Musk reproached Marco Rubio for not having reduced his staff.
You did not “turn anyone” would have pointed out the boss of X, Tesla and SpaceX. A remark deemed ungrateful by the Secretary of State, given the approximately 1,500 civil servants of the State Department who took an early retirement against departure checks. The leader of diplomacy would have gone so far as to ask “sarcastically if Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all these people just to be able to pretend to dismiss them again,” reports the New York Times.
Even before this meeting, the tension between the two men was already latent. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was “furious in private against Elon Musk for weeks since his team had actually closed an entire agency which was supposed to be under the jurisdiction of Marco Rubio: the agency of the United States for international development”, continues the newspaper.
When republican tenors stand against Musk
After a verbal game of several minutes opposite around twenty ministers, the President of the United States would ultimately intervened to defend Marco Rubio, saying that he was doing “excellent work”. A part far from being harmless: it could mark “the first significant indication that Donald Trump was ready to impose certain limits on Elon Musk, whose actions have become the subject of several legal proceedings and have aroused concerns among republican legislators”, judge the New York Times.
According to several American media, some Republicans have even been to complain directly to the head of state of the brutal or inconsistent methods of Elon Musk to reduce the workforce. In the beginning of the week alone, the advertisements and projects for workforce have followed one another: between 40,000 and 50,000 at the taxman, more than 70,000 at the Ministry of Veterans Affairs … A dismantling is also reported by the press within the Ministry of Education.
Just a few weeks ago, Recalls the BBCElon Musk brandished, gift from Argentinian President Javier Milei, a gleaming chainsaw during a conservative conference, whom he called the “bureaucracy chainsaw” – a visible symbol of his assumed as aggressive strategies. Added to the strong criticisms of both political edges, a federal judge and the president of a Federal Public Service Council recently concluded that these thousands were not linked to performance problems – and that they could have violated the laws of the public service.
Just before the meeting on Thursday, the billionaire also encountered the transport secretary, Sean Duffy, with whom an also lively conversation would have taken place on the question of whether the working group of the Department of Government efficiency had attempted to dismiss the air controllers, already in shortage within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
A meeting planned to crop Elon Musk?
While congratulating the advances of the Elon Musk working group, this meeting would have been an opportunity for the president of the United States to suggest a slightly more refined approach to the first patron of his campaign. And, even more, to reframe your power of action: henceforth, he announced, it will be the Secretaries of State who will make executive decisions concerning the staff. The DOGE teams will only advise. Earlier in the week, head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, had publicly called on CNN that the cabinet secretaries could keep the full power to hire and dismiss.
For Politico,, It was also the very purpose of the meeting of ministers. “President Donald Trump gathered his cabinet in person on Thursday to issue a message: you are responsible for your departments, not Elon Musk”, judges the American political media. He would also have reaffirmed wanting to keep the right people to the government and not to massage competent federal officials en masse. According to a source of the online media present at the meeting, Elon Musk acknowledged that his working group had taken a few false steps.
After this council of ministers, the American president said in a message published on Truth Social that he would thus bring together his government with Elon Musk every two weeks. And reaffirmed that the next phase of its federal workforce reduction plan would be carried out with a “scalpel” rather than with a “hatchet” – a clear reference to the approach of Elon Musk’s burned earth.