‘Is Anybody Unhappy With Elon?’

 

‘Is Anybody Unhappy With Elon?’

 

President Trump’s first cabinet meeting was a display of deference to Elon Musk.

 

Jess Bidgood

By Jess Bidgood

Feb. 26, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/trump-musk-cabinet-meeting.html

 

A couple of hours before President Trump convened his cabinet for the first time, he used his social media platform to declare that the group was “EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON.”

 

As the meeting began, it seemed to be the members’ job to prove it.

 

The secretaries sat largely in silence behind their paper name cards, the sort of thing you need when, powerful though you may be, you are not a household name. And they listened politely as the richest man in the world loomed over them, scolding them about the size of the deficit, sheepishly admitting to temporarily canceling an effort to prevent ebola and insisting they were all crucial to his mission.

 

“I’d like to thank everyone for your support,” Elon Musk said.

 

In fact, Musk has not had the support of every cabinet secretary — at least not when he tried to order their employees to account for their time over email or resign. When a reporter asked about the obvious tension, Trump kicked the question to the secretaries themselves.

 

“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump asked. “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Is anybody unhappy?”

 

Nobody was unhappy. Nervous laughter rippled around the table as Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, grinned and led a slow clap, which Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, eventually joined before scratching her nose.

 

Next to her, Kelly Loeffler, the small business administrator, applauded and attended to an itch on her ear. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered up a single clap and gazed over at Musk, a fixed smile on his face. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, shifted in his seat.

 

Trump’s cabinet meetings have been known for awkward displays of deference. But today’s might have been the first that was a display of deference not to a president, but to a tech executive.

 

Musk is not a cabinet secretary. He does not even officially run the Department of Government Efficiency, the vehicle for his government shake-up. (Read on to learn who does.) But he was the elephant in the room, my colleague Shawn McCreesh wrote, and the episode left no doubt that Trump expects his cabinet to fall in line behind Musk anyway.

 

“They will follow the orders,” Trump said.

 

Musk declared the group was the “best cabinet ever,” and then launched into an explanation about his directive to federal employees. It was Trump, he said, who had urged him to be more “aggressive.” And it was Trump, he added, who had told him he could send out the directive, which he described as a “pulse check review.”

 

By the end of the discussion, the message to the cabinet secretaries seemed clear: An order from Musk, who has cast himself as a kind of enforcer for Trump, should be considered an order from the president. And everybody should be happy about it.