type: timeline_event
A hastily arranged Cabinet meeting at the White House erupted into shouting matches as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confronted Elon Musk over DOGE's aggressive workforce cuts. The confrontation exposed tensions between Trump's Cabinet and the tech billionaire who had been granted extraordinary power over federal agencies.
Musk accused Rubio of failing to slash State Department staff, telling him he had fired "nobody" and scornfully adding he was only "good on TV." Rubio, already furious over DOGE's elimination of USAID (an agency under State Department purview), fired back that Musk was lying, pointing to 1,500 officials who had taken deferred resignation offers. Rubio sarcastically asked if Musk wanted him to rehire them just so he could fire them "in a more outrageous fashion."
Duffy confronted Musk over attempts to lay off air traffic controllers during a national shortage, stating "I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?" When Musk demanded names of fired controllers, Duffy replied there were none because he had intervened to stop DOGE's team. Musk called Duffy's assertion a "lie."
Trump watched the exchanges in silence with arms crossed before intervening to call Rubio "fantastic" and telling everyone to work together. Asked about the meeting the next day, Trump denied any clash occurred, calling the reporter "a troublemaker." The Cabinet meeting revealed the chaos of governance-by-billionaire as Trump's appointees struggled against Musk's unaccountable power.