Trump comments on the disagreements within his administration between Musk and Rubio
“There was no confrontation… I was there,” US President Donald Trump told a reporter Friday who asked him about a New York Times report of a rift between Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump said the billionaire responsible for cutting the federal government workforce and the secretary of state get along great.
The New York Times reported that the two men clashed violently on Thursday during a cabinet meeting.
According to the report, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO accused the secretary of state of not firing anyone yet.
In his defense, the minister reportedly pointed to the voluntary departure of a large number of employees in his ministry, before sarcastically asking whether Musk wanted him to rehire them so he could fire them more conspicuously.
According to the New York Times, Trump later defended the secretary of state during the hastily called meeting.
The New York Times also spoke of tension between Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Musk, who runs the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
According to the report, the minister accused the world’s richest man of wanting to fire air traffic controllers, while the businessman insisted that this was a lie.
The report said that Trump ended the controversy by requesting that air traffic controllers be hired from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most advanced research institutions in the world, to ensure that they were geniuses.
After this ministerial meeting, the US President announced that he would meet with his cabinet and Musk every two weeks, calling for the use of the scalpel and not the axe to dismiss federal government employees.
“It’s very important that we reduce our workforce to the level we need, but it’s also important that we retain the best and most qualified people,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Since the beginning of the week, there have been a series of announcements and plans to cut the number of employees: between 40,000 and 50,000 in the IRS, and more than 70,000 in the Department of Veterans Affairs, while US media spoke about dismantling the Department of Education.
Several local media outlets have reported tensions between Musk and government officials who consider his methods too harsh and are unhappy with his encroachment on their authority.
