I’ve been gone all day, but I came home this evening and saw today’s news and was greeted with some pretty bombastic headlines.
From the Independent: “Marco Rubio unleashes his fury on Elon Musk in heated cabinet meeting, report says.” “Marco Rubio, Elon Musk get into heated argument during blowout meeting: report,” the New York Daily News suggests. “Musk-Rubio clash heightens scrutiny on Trump’s approach,” writes The Hill. You get the idea. I wondered what the heck had happened while I was away from today’s news cycle.
As it turns out, the headlines all stem from one New York Times article that was published on Friday afternoon entitled “Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk.” The subtitle reads, “Simmering anger at the billionaire’s unchecked power spilled out in a remarkable Cabinet Room meeting. The president quickly moved to rein in Mr. Musk.”
The bulk of the article appears to come from anonymous sources with “knowledge of the meeting” that Donald Trump had with Musk and his cabinet members on Thursday. The meeting was reportedly scheduled at the last minute on Wednesday night, which the Times says “was a sign that Mr. Trump was mindful of the growing complaints.” It alleges that “Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw [sic] approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.”
The article also implies that Musk and the Secretary of State got into an argument because Musk accused Rubio of firing “nobody.” Here’s what supposedly happened next:
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.
Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The article also states that other members of the cabinet, specifically Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Secretary of Veteran Affairs Doug Collins, had complaints about Musk and the lack of strategy involved in the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) desire to fire federal employees.
To hear the New York Times tell it, the whole administration is in disarray, everyone hates Musk, and Donald Trump has lost control. All based on anonymous sources. But here’s what those involved with the meeting had to say.
Related: Oops! I Think the NYT Just Said the Quiet Part About Deportation Out Loud
Trump posted the following on Truth Social on Thursday after the meeting:
…DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing. As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the “scalpel” rather than the “hatchet.” The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.
We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one. It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people. We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done. The relationships between everybody in that room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is, simply, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Musk posted his agreement on X:
Very productive meeting pic.twitter.com/RrMYb3CGh5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2025
The New York Times even reported that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to them with the following statement: “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. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”
And State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce responded to the Times by saying, “Secretary Rubio considered the meeting an open and productive discussion with a dynamic team that is united in achieving the same goal: making America great again.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Veteran Affairs also had good things to say about the outcome of the meeting, and Duffy posted this on X on Friday afternoon:
Thank you @POTUS for hosting another productive Cabinet meeting @WhiteHouse yesterday. It’s difficult to express just what a change it is to have such a fully engaged and in-command businessman at the helm leading our nation.
DOGE is doing incredible work helping agencies…
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) March 7, 2025
And last but not least, an NBC reporter asked Trump about it today, and the president shut it all down, saying that the reporter was “just a troublemaker,” that Musk and Rubio get along just fine, and that they’re both doing a great job. You can watch that exchange here:
President Trump shuts down an NBC reporter for pushing the Fake News that there was a “clash” between Secretary Marco Rubio and Elon Musk:
“No clash. I was there. You’re just a troublemaker.” pic.twitter.com/e7gUy8HRMx
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 7, 2025
So what really happened? Well, of course, no one knows but the people who were inside the meeting themselves, and who knows where the Times got this info exactly? They’re not exactly the beacons of excellent reporting. And no matter what happened, it sounds like everyone involved is still on the same page right now.
But here’s my take: Even if all of this did take place — or some version of it — why is it a bad thing? Don’t we want the people running the country to speak up when something is or isn’t working and figure out together how to fix it or keep it going? Don’t we want these leaders to exchange ideas, even if they have to “clash” sometimes? This sounds like productivity to me.
My personal view is that yes, we need to slash federal spending big time, but I agree with Collins that there probably needs to be more strategy involved, especially for departments like Veterans Affairs. So reading about what took place on Thursday actually sounded like a group of people who have only been working together for a little over a month fine-tuning some points so they can continue forward toward the same goals.
Could that change down the line? Of course. But I think it’s a little too soon to start acting like everyone hates each other and it’s all imploding… unless you have an agenda. And we all know the New York Times usually does.
Trump is truly ushering in a new American Golden Age, but as you can see, Democrats, the mainstream media, and everyone else on the left will do what they can to prevent it. We’re trying to combat that.
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