Ron Filipkowski - Today in Politics, Bulletin 86. 3/7/25
… NYT reported on a tense argument between members of Trump’s Cabinet and Elon Musk during their recent meeting to hash things out. The report says that Marco Rubio was “privately furious with Musk for weeks, ever since his DOGE team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: USAID,” and was ready to air his grievances against Musk along with others.
… Musk was criticizing members of the Cabinet in the meeting for not firing enough employees - then singled out Rubio, scornfully sneering that he hadn’t fired anybody yet. Rubio reportedly snapped and noted that 1,500 people in his Dept accepted Musk’s buyouts and left. He then asked Musk if he wanted him to hire them back so he could make a show out of publicly firing them.
… Musk responded that wasn’t good enough, and said Rubio was only useful to do TV appearances and was terrible at his job. Trump sat back and watched “as if he was watching a tennis match.” After a while, Trump finally interrupted the argument and defended Rubio, saying that he was doing a great job with a lot of traveling and has a lot on his plate.
… Musk also went at it with Transportation Sec Sean Duffy on why he hadn’t fired enough people. Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick chimed in to back Musk. Duffy complained that young staffers with DOGE wanted him to fire air traffic controllers: “What am I supposed to do? I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?”
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/today-in-politics-bulletin-86-3725
Lutnick sounds like a real asshole.