President Donald Trump acknowledged arguments between his Cabinet members and Elon Musk but downplayed the friction after a verbal scuffle reportedly broke out between leading members of his administration and his billionaire adviser.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Transport Sean Duffy ended up in arguments with Musk during a cabinet meeting on Thursday about his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the spending task force earning the ire of both agency heads, The New York Times reported.
“I don’t think the tensions are high,” Trump said Sunday, addressing the mood inside his administration in a scrum with journalists on board Air Force One. “Elon’s a very special person and and these Cabinet people are special people. I think they have a fantastic relationship to Elon.”
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He added: “That doesn’t mean they don’t have a little bit of an argument here and there about something.”
The Times reported that Musk—whose DOGE has been tasked with leading the Trump administration’s efforts to purge thousands of federal employees—chastised Rubio at the meeting for having fired “nobody” and suggested he was only “good on TV.”
Rubio, who the paper said was furious at Musk for shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is under Rubio’s purview, shot back that 1,500 officials at his department had taken buyouts.
The two continued to bicker for an “uncomfortable” amount of time, the Times reported, before Trump jumped in and said Rubio was doing a “great job.”
Rubio was not the only Cabinet minister to get something off his chest.
Duffy, the Times reported, accused Musk’s DOGE team of attempting to fire air traffic controllers at a time when his department is coping with an acute national shortage of the essential workers and is dealing with intense public scrutiny following a series of plane crashes.
Musk, the paper said, called that a “lie” and asked for a list of names of air traffic controllers who had been fired. Duffy told him none had because he intervened and stopped the DOGE team.
Trump, the Times reported, had the last word in the exchange, telling Duffy that he should hire “geniuses” from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work as air traffic controllers.
