About 12 minutes into the first meeting of his new cabinet, President Trump addressed the elephant in the room. This was rather easy for him to do, since the elephant was standing 10 feet away, dressed all in black, hovering over the head of the table at which the president and the members of his cabinet sat.
“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Mr. Trump asked. Nervous laughter began to ripple around the room. “If you are,” Mr. Trump continued, “we’ll throw him out of here.” The cabinet started clapping.
It was meant as a joke — but just how funny did the various officials and aides crammed into the cabinet room really find the situation to be?
Days earlier, Elon Musk had gone over all their heads, ordering millions of federal workers to submit a written explanation of how they spend their days or else face termination.
Some of the cabinet secretaries and agency heads balked. Employees at the Departments of State (led by Marco Rubio, who sat on Mr. Trump’s right) and Defense (led by Pete Hegseth, who sat on Mr. Trump’s left) were told not to comply with Mr. Musk’s order. Same for the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security and Justice.
Mr. Musk then began to post about the many people who had “failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.” The White House press secretary was unable or unwilling to explain what was happening or who reported to whom. It seemed as though the first true power struggle of the second Trump administration was underway.
The president tried to pretend all was well, but he seemed to understand on Wednesday that there was trouble in his court. “ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON,” he posted a few hours before the meeting. “The Media will see that at the Cabinet Meeting this morning!!!”
The cabinet members stared expectantly at Mr. Musk as he stood up a few minutes into the meeting and began to hold forth.
At first, it seemed as though he might have been relegated to a lesser power position in the meeting. He was not given an actual seat at the table; he was put in the row of chairs behind it, alongside other aides who are not at the cabinet level, such as Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro. But then the president asked the tech mogul to speak first — “I’d like to have Elon Musk please say a few words” — and Mr. Musk spent much of the rest of the meeting standing over the table at which the cabinet sat. He spoke far more than anyone else, other than Mr. Trump.
Mr. Musk explained to the cabinet members that he had sent that demand to their employees only after clearing it with the president.
“I said, ‘Can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get done last week,’ and the president said yes,” he told them. This was a reversal of the way things usually work in Washington — it used to be that underlings would take the fall even if the boss was to blame. Now the underling was publicly pointing the finger at the boss to mollify the other underlings he had trampled over, while the boss nodded along.
It was fascinating to watch Mr. Musk as he attempted to manage both up and down at the same time. “President Trump has put together the best cabinet ever, literally,” he said. “I don’t think that such a talented team has ever been assembled.”
The talented team stared back at him. He was costumed very differently from them. He wore a black MAGA hat and the same “Tech Support” T-shirt he had on last week when he sat for a joint interview with the president on Fox News. “I actually just call myself a humble tech support,” the world’s richest man said, chuckling at this little bit of modesty. A few cabinet secretaries laughed along politely.
Mr. Musk tried to appeal to their sense of pity for the difficult work he has undertaken. “I’m taking a lot of flack,” he said, “and getting a lot of death threats, by the way.” He wanted them to understand just how crucial his work is. “If we don’t do this,” he said, slowing down for emphasis, “America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done.” (A report in the Washington Post published Wednesday found that Mr. Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding).
The many heads in the room turned back and forth, looking to Mr. Musk one minute and Mr. Trump the next. The members of the cabinet must contend with two billionaire bosses — both of whom command millions of followers on the social media platforms they own, and who are known for attacking anyone who dares to defy them.
But before the first cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration adjourned, the president made sure everyone knew who was actually in charge. A reporter wanted to know how he thought about “executive control” and the power of the presidency. “Is it your view of your authority,” the reporter asked, “that you have the power to call up any one or all of the people seated at this table and issue orders that they’re bound to follow?”
Mr. Trump lowered his voice somewhat dramatically. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “they’ll follow the orders, yes, they will.”
Nobody mistook that one for a joke.
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