Jesse Watters Plea About His Friend Fired By DOGE Inspired Trump to Rein in Elon Musk: Report
President Donald Trump put restraints on his DOGE commander Elon Musk last week after hearing a gripe about his broad staffing cuts from Fox News host Jesse Watters, according to a report.
Trump said on social media last week that he had informed his cabinet secretaries that they were in charge of staffing – not Musk. Trump also said he had urged Musk to be more precise when firing swaths of federal employees.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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.’”
According to The Atlantic, comments made on the air by Watters last month made their way to Trump, who was not pleased about the bad press.
Watters said on The Five that he knew someone at the Pentagon who had lost a job due to DOGE’s cuts – reportedly leading to Trump’s reining in of Musk:
Over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul empowered to slash the federal government. Some of Trump’s top advisers became worried about the political fallout from DOGE’s sweeping cuts, especially after seeing scenes of angry constituents yelling at GOP members of Congress in town halls.
All of this culminated in Trump taking his first steps to rein in Musk’s powers yesterday. The president called a closed-door meeting with Cabinet members and Musk, one that devolved into sharp exchanges between the DOGE head and several agency leaders. Afterward, Trump declared that his Cabinet would now “go first” in deciding whom in their departments to keep or fire.
As Mediaite reported on Feb. 20, Watters complained he knew someone who had been “DOGE’d” out of a career.
“He punched out after 20 years of working for the Pentagon,” Watters said. “And he’s only been there a few months, so his probationary period he just found out he’s probably going to get laid off.”
Watters concluded:
He texted me and said: “Jesse, this is not good. I’m really sad. I’m upset.” This guy is not a DEI consultant. He is not a climate consultant. This guy is a veteran. So when you’re talking about DOGE-ing people, veterans should get priority. Because if you’re going to go out there and kill enemies, put your life on the line, you should not be in the same category as people that are doing DEI.
