President Donald Trump‘s first White House Cabinet meeting on Wednesday saw the president and his agency leaders advance foreign and domestic issues, and it offered tech billionaire Elon Musk an opportunity to address concerns over the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk’s DOGE has steamrolled Washington with Trump’s support. The president said the Environmental Protection Agency would gut 65% of its workforce, or 10,000 employees, as DOGE attempts to slim down the federal workforce.
During the Cabinet meeting, Trump confirmed reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would visit the White House on Friday and announced the United States and Ukraine have “worked out” the details of a minerals agreement.
Ending the Russia-Ukraine war has been a top focus for the administration after a U.S. delegation met with a Russian delegation to begin hashing out a peace deal.
On the domestic front, Musk was the first person in the administration to speak to the room after the president gave his remarks, a stark display of Musk’s influence.
The meeting, which was over an hour long, was a departure from former President Joe Biden’s administration. During Biden’s term in office, the White House limited press interactions with the president and opted for shorter meetings to prevent Biden’s increasing health problems from becoming the news of the day.
Here are the top takeaways from Trump’s Cabinet meeting.
1. Musk looms large over the administration
Although Musk is not a Cabinet member, he was the next person to offer up a lengthy explanation of his actions through DOGE after Trump called on him.
Musk, wearing a black Make America Great Again hat, stood up and spoke to the room, unlike Trump, who spoke while sitting down.
The tech billionaire said he was merely “tech support” and defended his controversial actions, including demanding federal employees list their accomplishments or risk losing their jobs in an email sent over the weekend.
But he conceded his actions could lead to mistakes.
“We will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect, but when we make a mistake, we’ll fix it very quickly,” Musk said. “So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was ebola prevention. I think we all want ebola prevention, so we restored ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”
However, after the Cabinet meeting, Dr. Craig Spencer, an associate professor at Brown University School of Public Health, rejected Musk’s claim that the United States Agency for International Development funding halt didn’t hobble public health.
“It’s NOT true to say ‘one of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola prevention’ and that it was quickly restored,” Spencer posted on X, adding that Musk “directly dismantled the response structures needed to end Ebola outbreaks abroad and protect us here in the U.S.”
Musk also reaffirmed his plans to send another email to federal employees asking them to explain their accomplishments despite the widespread confusion the first email caused within several agencies.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Trump later said about a second round of emails. “You got a lot of people that have not responded. So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist? Who are they? And it’s possible that a lot of those people will be actually fired.”
“This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting,” the president said.
Trump also reiterated his defense of Musk during the meeting.
“Anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, then we’ll throw them out of here,” Trump said as his remarks drew applause from the room. “They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this. And some disagree a little bit. But I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone’s not only happy — they’re thrilled.”
2. Rubio and Hegseth flank Trump, with Musk sitting on sidelines
During the lengthy Cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flanked Trump on his right and left, respectively.
Vice President JD Vance sat across from the president and was flanked on his left by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Trump sat in the center of the room, as is protocol for such meetings.
Rubio, as secretary of state, ranks first in the Cabinet and is expected to sit to the president’s right. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent is second rank and sits to Vance’s right. As third rank, Hegseth sits to the president’s left, and Bondi, as fourth rank, sits to the left of the vice president.
Lower ranking members such as Alina Habba, counselor to the president, Musk, and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller sat on the outskirts of the conference table.
Rubio was directly mentioned by Trump, along with Musk, after Trump was asked about which federal department he was impressed with.
“I think that Elon has done incredibly with some groups, and some groups are much easier than others,” Trump began.
“State is, you know, [a] very difficult situation. We’re right now negotiating very successfully, I think, with Russia and with Ukraine, and we have a lot of countries involved,” Trump continued. “And we have to be a little bit careful what we do and who we’re terminating, but Marco is doing that very — I think he’s going to be very precise.”
3. Trump is serious about creating a new immigration ‘gold card’
The president reiterated his proposal to begin selling $5 million gold cards to wealthy immigrants looking to relocate to the U.S.
Trump lamented businesses are unable to hire immigrants who lack the required documentation to work in the country.
“These companies can go and buy a gold card, and they can use it as a matter of recruitment. At the same time, the company is using that money to pay down debt,” Trump said before touting an Apple investment.
“I think the gold card is going to be used not only for that. I mean, they’ll be used by companies. I mean, I could see Apple. I’ve spoken with Tim Cook, and by the way, he’s going to make a $500 billion investment in the country only because of the results of the election.”
Trump said the gold cards would be available in roughly two weeks.
“Maybe it will sell like crazy. I happen to think it’s going to sell like crazy. It’s a market,” he added.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that if 200,000 gold cards were sold, it would result in $1 trillion that could be used to pay down the nation’s debt.
“And that’s why the president is doing it, because we are going to balance his budget, and we are going to pay off the debt under President Trump,” Lutnick said.
4. Most Cabinet members avoid the spotlight
In 2017, Trump’s first Cabinet meeting during his first administration featured several Cabinet members lavishing praise on him, to Trump’s delight.
Eight years later, most of the Cabinet members in Trump’s second term did not address the room or take questions from reporters.
The vice president only spoke to defend Trump’s handling of the peace negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“We’re not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media,” Vance said. “He’s going to do it in private with the president of Russia, with the president of Ukraine, and with other leaders.”
“I just want to push back against some of the criticism I’ve seen in the administration on this because every single time the president engages in diplomacy, you guys preemptively accuse him of conceding to Russia,” Vance continued as he chastised the media. “He hasn’t conceded anything to anyone. He’s doing the job of a diplomat, and he is, of course, the diplomat in chief as the president of the United States.”
Others such as Lutnick, Musk, Hegseth, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave brief remarks but mostly deferred to Trump to lead the meeting.
None of the female members of the Cabinet spoke at the meeting, which included Bondi, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
5. New media pool reporters make their mark
In a shake-up of the White House press pool rotation, reporters with Newsmax and the Blaze were added to the small share of journalists covering the president on Wednesday.
The move follows White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s announcement the day before that the administration would take control of the rotation from the White House Correspondents’ Association.
James Rosen with Newsmax was in the room during the meeting, and he asked questions about monetizing the nation’s immigration system and whether Trump would allow China to take Taiwan.
Trump declined to comment on the Taiwan question. “I never comment on that,” he said.
Chris Bedford with the Blaze questioned Musk about the next steps for the federal workforce.
“About half of the government employees so far up here have responded to your request for what they’ve been doing over the past week. Is there a timeline in place for the next moves, for people being fired, and when can the American people expect to see results from that?” Bedford asked.
“I think that email perhaps was misinterpreted as a performance review, but actually, it was a pulse check review,” Musk said to some laughter. “Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two neurons?”
Hegseth was even questioned by his former Fox and Friends co-host Lawrence Jones, who pushed the administration about the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and asked Trump which Cabinet members he was impressed with.
AMY GLEASON IDENTIFIED AS ACTING DOGE LEADER AFTER WHITE HOUSE INSISTED IT WAS NOT MUSK
Journalist S.V. Date of HuffPost was supposed to serve as the print pooler on Wednesday but was told Tuesday evening that there wasn’t room for him. Axios replaced HuffPost as the pool outlet.
“I’m waiting for the pool chain note, the daily guidance, something to tell me what time I’m supposed to be here, and don’t get anything,” he said of the ordeal, explaining that he reached out to the White House, only to be told there was “no room in the pool” for him.