Marco Rubio and Elon Musk Had Knock-Down, Drag-Out Fight on Thursday — and Trump Sided With Rubio

LEFT: Elon Musk (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) RIGHT: Marco Rubio (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk reportedly had a knock-down, drag-out fight at Thursday’s private Cabinet White House meeting that only ended when President Donald Trump intervened on Rubio’s behalf, according to The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.

Per the Times, Rubio endured a torrent of criticism at the meeting from Musk — who accused him of firing “nobody” at the State Department — pouring fuel on a fire that had already been burning.

“Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his DOGE team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of the president and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest,” wrote Swan and Haberman. “Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.”

From their report:

Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he wasn’t good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.

After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.

The Times story comes one day after Politico reported that “Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy” during the meeting. In a post on Truth Social, Trump also provided a summary of the meeting:

DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing. As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the “scalpel” rather than the “hatchet.” The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.

“We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one. It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people,” wrote Trump.