CNN
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If it is still doubtful where the power of President Donald Trump’s new administration is, Wednesday’s first cabinet meeting revealed that it is not in the actual cabinet.
Most of the top-ranked agency managers to which the Senate was announced were largely silent around the table, despite some of them being prepared to make simple statements during the hour-long meeting.
Instead, it was a man in a dark coat sitting in the shadows along the side of the room, and Trump gave up the meeting at opening time.
Billionaire Elon Musk, tasked with reforming the government, is now Trump’s most powerful adviser. His efforts to dramatically change the federal bureaucracy have been protesting, confusion and quietly complaining in the past few days, even from Trump’s allies about his rude tactics.
But if Wednesday’s meeting was any indication, Trump himself has never felt good about his top campaign booster empowering him to slash his government with proverb chainsaws.
“Is everyone unhappy with Elon?” he asked the cabinet members at one point and looked around his table.
By raising musk and bold cabinet members and expressing concern, with a full view of the television cameras, Trump informed his team of power dynamics within his administration. Instead of joining themselves, members of the Cabinet – members confirmed by the Senate and the candidates who still await their vote – served far more in the background.
Trump spoke about the majority of his meetings. But Musk spoke three times more than anyone else. It was not 56 minutes after the meeting that Trump invited Vice President J.D. Vance to speak, he offered a 36-second comment. The Housing Secretary was invited to speak, but only to provide opening prayers.
The visuals of the midday meeting could not have been more appropriate.
Musk spoke in the Half Shadow of the TV Lights that were being directed at Trump and the TV Lights that are tasked with leading the government’s defense department, the Treasury Department, the state and other agencies.
Each of these Cabinet officials gets a chair assigned to the room, with gold plaques stuck to their seats (most often they have chairs when they leave the government). Musk was sitting outside a Senate-confirmed circle of government officials, caught between two mid-level aides.
Even his outfit seemed to suggest that he was not playing under the usual Washington rules. Unlike the other male companions of Trump in the room, masks, who wore all dark suits and neck ties, were now wearing standard work clothes.
That was the explanation he gave of the work he is doing within the Trump administration.
“It’s so crazy that it’s heard, and it’s almost a literal explanation of the work the Doge team is doing, and it helps to fix the government’s computer systems,” he said.
Doge’s transfers are far beyond tinkering with some software. Young engineers working for masks have incorporated themselves throughout the federal government in search of access to sensitive databases, requiring career staff to justify employment and cancel fraudulent programs.
It all seemed OK for most of Trump’s Cabinet members who largely share his purpose in reducing the size of the federal government.
“I obviously have full support for Doge. In fact, I submitted five things I did last week,” Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins said before the meeting. “I’m very proud of that. I’m proud of the USDA employees.”
CNN reported Tuesday that it was mask instructions over the weekend to send work week or risk-ending accounts that have led to surprises among secretaries and ministers.
In federal officials, the chain of command is a way of life, and usually stands for those on top of the departments and institutions that make up the administrative body. Bypassing that governance structure, some officials rubbed it the wrong way.
“What we’re trying to get to the bottom is probably why they can’t handle it because we think there are a lot of people dying in government salaries,” Musk called the HR management office’s email on Saturday to “Pulse Check” across the federal workforce, calling it instead of a performance review.
Trump confirmed Wednesday that some members of his cabinet might “a bit oppose” Musk’s tactics, but the entire conference sent an undeniable signal that Musk was operating with the president’s full blessing, with little open objection.
“They have a lot of respect for Elon and he’s doing this,” Trump said. “And some people are a little opposed, but I’ll tell you most of the part, I think not only is everyone happy, but they’re excited.”
For the president who takes optics as seriously as Trump, calling Musk before his cabinet members, almost an hour before Vance – emphasized whether Musk was already the first of equality in the White House and the entire government.
Trump chief Susie Wills, whom the president previously described as “the most powerful woman in the world,” had a seat at the table during Wednesday’s meeting but did not speak. She left the meeting early for a luncheon with Senate Republicans. Many of them ask about the role of masks.
Wills said he laid out the “nuts and bolts” for mask work and reported directly to Trump rather than his cabinet secretary.
“Mush is working directly with the president, and the president is working with his ministers,” Wills told the group.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, said Wills described Musk as “the procedure, what they do and how they do it… how Elon does it, how they hired people, how they put them together, where they go, what they do next.”
The majority of the cabinet meeting took place in front of the camera. When Trump sent reporters out of the room more than an hour later, the rest of the meeting only lasted another 20 minutes.
However, the president held courts on many of these topics.
He vowed not to cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, despite passing House Republicans passing budget blueprints that include plans to cut $880 billion in 10 years from the federal health and energy program. Trump urged GOP lawmakers to support the measure.
“This wouldn’t be “reading my lips,” Trump said. He mentioned former president George HW Bush, who prevented taxes from rising by declaring at the Republican Congress in 1988. Four years later, taxes went up and Bush lost his re-election.
The conversation began with musk, but was soon left to one of Trump’s almost day-long questions and answers. He confirmed that Ukrainian President Voldymir Zelensky will be visiting Washington on Friday. His Environmental Protection Agency administrators have declined to say whether they will move to cut around 65% of the agency’s workforce and prevent China from taking Taiwan forcibly.
Some presidents will convene cabinets or send unified messages during times of crisis, but Wednesday’s session shows that the meeting is being used for something else: the Trump Mask Show.
Manu Raju from CNN contributed to this report.
