 "Elon Musk speaks as President Donald Trump holds his first Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington. AP")
A month after coming back to power, US President Donald Trump held his first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday (February 26) and like everything the US president has done so far, this too grabbed the public’s attention.
The one-hour session, which saw the likes of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, began with a prayer. It also addressed the elephant in the room in the form of billionaire Elon Musk. The US president also addressed the prospect of peace in Ukraine, the tariffs he plans to impose and mass layoffs within the federal workforce.
Here are the main takeaways from Trump’s Cabinet meeting.
Musk hogs the limelight
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the social platform X, is not technically part of the president’s Cabinet, but his influence was on full display as he joined Wednesday’s meeting.
About 12 minutes into the meeting, Trump gave Musk, who wore a black ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap, the chance to speak first.
The US president started by saying, “Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Nervous laughter ensued, to which Trump said, “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.”
Referring to himself as ‘humble tech support’, Musk then outlined Doge ’s role in the administration — especially referring to the layoffs of federal employees. “The overall goal here with the Doge team is to help address the enormous deficit. We simply cannot sustain as a country $2 trillion deficits,” Musk said, outlining how his team is seeking to update government computer systems while also dramatically reducing the federal deficit.
He added, “If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done.”
The billionaire also referred to the controversial email that he had sent to federal employees asking them to submit a written explanation of how they spend their days or else face termination. Musk told the Cabinet members that he had sent that demand to their employees only after clearing it with the president.
“I said, ‘Can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get done last week,’ and the president said yes,” he told them.
“I think that email perhaps was misinterpreted as a performance review, but actually, it was a pulse check review,” Musk said, chuckling. “Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two neurons? If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email.”
Musk added, without any proof, that there were a “number of people on the government payroll who are dead” and hence the email was to check if the workers were real and alive.
The ‘First Buddy’ also acknowledged that the Doge team could make mistakes but vowed to correct them quickly. “One of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola — Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored the Ebola prevention immediately,” he said.
Musk also revealed that his team has been receiving a lot of death threats for his work. “I’m taking a lot of flack,” he said, “and getting a lot of death threats, by the way.”
Trump’s tariff war
Besides Musk taking up a big chunk of time at the Cabinet meeting, US President Donald Trump also raised the issue of tariffs not only on neighbouring countries Canada and Mexico but also on the European Union (EU).
On the issue of Canada and Mexico tariffs, which were deferred to March 4, Trump said they would instead arrive on April 2. Lutnick, the commerce secretary, also hinted there could be further pauses on the tariffs if Canada and Mexico “can prove to the president they’ve done an excellent job”.
“They have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him in that regard,” Lutnick said.
The US president also said that he would be announcing a 25 per cent tariff on some EU products. “We’ll be announcing it very soon,” he said. “It’ll be 25 per cent generally speaking and that will be on cars and all other things.”
“They’ve really taken advantage of us,” Trump said of the EU. “They don’t accept our cars. They don’t accept essentially our farm products. They use all sorts of reasons why not.”
Trump confirms Zelenskyy’s visit
Amid rising tensions between Ukraine and the US — Trump called President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘ dictator ’ — the US president confirmed that his Ukrainian counterpart would visit the White House on Friday (February 28).
“We’ll be really partnering with Ukraine in terms of rare Earth . We very much need rare Earth. They have great rare Earth,” he said, adding that the deal “brings us great wealth”.
However, Trump refused to commit to any security guarantees. “Well, I’m not gonna make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re gonna have Europe do that,” Trump said.
The US president added that the minerals deal was great for Ukraine too, saying, “It’s a great deal for Ukraine too because they get us over there, and we’re going to be working over there. We’ll be on the land. And you know, in that way, there’s sort of automatic security because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”
‘Gold card’ shines at Cabinet
At Trump’s first Cabinet meet, he also expanded on his proposal for a ‘gold card’ , which could act as an alternative to green cards. The initiative would see individuals having to shell out $5 million for citizenship.
Trump expressed confidence in the ‘gold card’ idea saying, “I happen to think it’ll sell like crazy. It’s a market.” “If we sell a million, that’s $5 trillion,” Trump said, adding that there was a strong demand from the business community to participate.
“I think we will sell a lot because there’s really a thirst for it,” he said.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick further explained that Trump’s new plan would replace the EB-5 programme, which gives US visas to investors who spend around $1 million on a company that hires at least 10 people.
Lutnick said that the EB-5 programme “has been around for many years for investment in projects” but had “poor oversight and execution.”
With inputs from agencies