Summary
Elon Musk clashed with Trump’s cabinet in a heated White House meeting over Doge’s aggressive cost-cutting.
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy was enraged by Musk’s attempts to cut air traffic controllers despite a national shortage, accusing him of unjustified layoffs. Duffy presented a spreadsheet showing Musk was not telling the truth, prompting Trump to order MIT graduates be hired instead.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins criticized hospital cuts, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also confronted Musk.
Trump backed his cabinet, emphasizing a “scalpel rather than hatchet” approach to staffing reductions.
Removing the large swaths of the workforce in an agency does not automatically mean the remaining people will become more efficient and pick up the extra work. They need processes, tools, and training to support the increased workload - and even then it is possible that the RIF was too much. I’m not even sure a “scalpel” would be effective without a way to redirect the blood. Are these guys trying to be a case study in the HBR on what not to do?
The Republican playbook has never been to make government better. Their goal is to make it worse so they can get more people to agree that it just needs to be privatized.