Billionaire Elon Musk attended US President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, amid widespread criticism of his sweeping government cuts. Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to cut costs by downsizing the federal government and slashing spending, told the Cabinet that he has been getting “a lot of death threats” for the work he was doing.
His remarks came when Trump asked him to stand up and explain how the DOGE was working and how much they were cutting.
“It’s an honour to have you. He’s been a tremendously successful guy. He’s really working so hard. And he’s got businesses to run. And in many ways, they say, “How do you do this?” And, you know, he’s sacrificing a lot and – getting a lot of praise, I’ll tell you, but he’s also getting hit. And we would expect that, and that’s the way it works,” Trump said.
Musk, who was wearing his usual black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, then stood up and said he calls himself a “humble tech support”.
“Because this is actually – as crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that the DOGE team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems. Many of these systems are extremely old. They don’t communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. The software doesn’t work. So, we are actually tech support. It’s ironic, but it’s true,” he said.
🚨BREAKING: Elon Musk Delivers Remarks at the First Official Trump Cabinet Meeting 🔥
“I consider myself humble tech support. It is not optional to balance this budget, is it essential. I’m receiving a lot of death threats, I could stack them up. I believe we can actually find a… pic.twitter.com/JbVRe3FZSF
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) February 26, 2025
The “overall goal” with the DOGE team is to help address the enormous deficit,” the world’s richest man told cabinet members at the White House.
“If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt,” he said, adding that he was “taking a lot of flak, and getting a lot of death threats by the way.”
“We simply cannot sustain, as a country, $2 trillion deficits,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO added.
“DOGE Will Make Mistakes”
Elon Musk said the DOGE “will make mistakes” and “won’t be perfect”. “But when we make a mistake, we’ll fix it very quickly.”
“So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally cancelled, very briefly, was Ebola – Ebola prevention. I think we all wanted Ebola prevention. So, we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption,” he said.
“But we do need to move quickly if we’re to achieve a trillion-dollar deficit reduction in financial year 2026. It requires saving $4 billion per day, every day from now through the end of September. But we can do it, and we will do it,” Musk added.
Photo Credit: AFP
Musk’s remarks came amid US media reports that some cabinet members had expressed frustration over DOGE emails sent to all federal employees asking them to justify their jobs or be sacked.
“Is anybody unhappy with Elon? If they are we’ll throw them out of here,” Trump said to laughter and applause from his cabinet members.
“They have a lot of respect for Elon. And some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone is not only happy, they’re thrilled,” the 78-year-old Republican said.
Protests, Resignations Follow Musk Cuts
Some federal workers have protested Elon Musk’s actions by resigning. This week, roughly a third of DOGE’s technology staff quit, saying they would not work in a way that puts the country at risk.
Before the approximately 20 staffers left DOGE, federal employees had created a website called “We Are the Builders” to share stories of the impact of DOGE’s actions.
Dozens of lawsuits have also been filed against Musk’s threats or demands.
The largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), has also vowed to challenge “unlawful” terminations, calling Musk “unhinged”.
Some 1,00,000 of the nation’s 2.3 million civilian federal workers have so far been fired or taken buyouts.
(With agency inputs)