Marco Rubio blew up at Elon Musk at a closed-door Cabinet meeting after the DOGE head accused the secretary of state of failing to slash his staff, according to a report.
Musk, the world’s richest man, told the secretary of state, who was seated next to Donald Trump at the meeting on Thursday, that he had fired “nobody,” The New York Times reported. He sarcastically added that the one person Rubio had perhaps fired was an employee of Musk’s DOGE.
Rubio, the Times reported, has been privately livid at Musk since he tore apart an agency supposedly under the secretary’s control: the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk has effectively eliminated in his bid to take a chainsaw to federal spending.
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The top foreign affairs official fired back that Musk was wrong. Rubio pointed to the more than 1,500 State Department staff who had taken the early retirement offer. Didn’t that count? he asked.
Matching Musk’s own sarcasm, Rubio reportedly asked whether the DOGE head wanted to rehire those employees so that he could fire them again and take credit.
Later in the fiery exchange, Musk remarked that Rubio was “good on TV,” the implication being that he wasn’t good at much else, according to the Times.
The president watched the back-and-forth in silence, sitting back with his arms crossed. It dragged on for an uncomfortably long time.
Finally, Trump stepped in to play peacemaker. He said that Rubio was doing “a great job.” Everyone needed to work together, he added.
Before turning his attention to Rubio in the meeting, Musk, an unelected tech billionaire hand-picked by Trump, had taken shots at other top members of the president’s Cabinet.
Musk and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy got into their own quarrel over how the latter was managing the Federal Aviation Administration, the Times reported.
Duffy complained that DOGE’s youngsters were trying to fire air traffic controllers, which Musk responded was a “lie.”
The tussle ended with Trump intervening to tell Duffy to hire “geniuses” from MIT as air traffic controllers.
The Cabinet meeting laid bare the tensions among Trump’s inner circle. While the president’s team of officials largely approve of Musk’s goal to reduce federal government spending, some don’t appreciate his chaotic approach to doing so, according to the Times.
After the meeting, Trump publicly announced his intention to rein Musk in. He wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday evening that the next phase of DOGE’s cuts would be made with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet.” He added that DOGE was, nevertheless, an “incredible success.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Beast that “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.”
Meanwhile, Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department, told the Times, “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.”
Representatives for the State Department did not immediately reply to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the Times’ account of the meeting.
Duffy, for his part, called the meeting productive in an X post on Friday, shortly after the Times report appeared, but seemed to hint at his face-off with Musk.
“DOGE is doing incredible work helping agencies identify inefficiencies as well as advising us as we work on the critical upgrades to our air traffic control system,” he wrote. “During the Cabinet meeting, I discussed the importance of safety, particularly at the FAA and with air traffic controllers. The DEI Department at the FAA was eliminated on day 2.”
He also seconded Trump’s remark about DOGE deploying the “scalpel” in the future, adding that the Transportation Department “will continue to work closely with @elonmusk and his team to revolutionize the way government is run. This is an exciting time to be an American!”
Despite Musk’s blatant aggression toward Trump’s Cabinet in the meeting, he later claimed on X that the gathering had been “very productive.”
