Billionaire DOGE leader Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are looking to mend fences and put the bad blood behind them after it was reported the pair had an explosive exchange at the White House last week.
Musk and Rubio both traveled down to Florida over the weekend where they tried to make nice while attending a dinner Saturday night with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The pair have also put on a united front on social media.
On Sunday, they teaming up to hit back at criticism over the U.S.’s handling of the war in Ukraine.
Musk claimed in a post on X ‘my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.’
The post was perceived as a threat by the Polish foreign affairs minister Radosław Sikorski.
He reposted the comment on X with the caption ‘Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year.’
‘The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,’ Sikorski added.
That’s when Rubio jumped in to defend Musk posting on X ‘Just making things up. No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink.’
The secretary of state also claimed that ‘without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long.’
Elon Musk and Marco Rubio put on a united front on social media after it was reported that the pair had it out during a Cabinet meeting at the White House last Thursday
In another chummy post early Monday, Rubio also took the time to thank DOGE while announcing 83 percent of the USAID programs would be canceled.
He noted that 5,200 contracts had been cancelled, and the administration planned to work with Congress so the remaining programs would be administered under the State Department.
‘Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform,’ Rubio wrote.
Musk responded to the post ‘tough, but necessary’ about the decision and wrote ‘Good working with you.’
Their public buddying up comes after a bombshell report detailed their fiery clash in the Oval Office last week as President Trump looked on.
Rubio thanked DOGE in a post on X on Monday after clashing with Elon Musk last week
Seated around the table, the world’s richest man reportedly berated Rubio, according to the New York Times which had juicy new details on the gathering that took place Thursday.
Seated diagonally across the table, Musk accused the Secretary of State of failing to cut his staff.
As the New York Times put it, the tech billionaire slammed Rubio for not firing anyone and then ‘scornfully’ added perhaps the only person he had fired was a DOGE staff member.
But Rubio did not sit back in the meeting and just take it, instead accusing Musk of not being truthful.
The top Cabinet member asked whether the 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement buyouts counted as layoffs. And ‘sarcastically’ questioned if Musk wanted him to rehire them so he could fire them again, the Times reported.
President Trump holding his first Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26. Elon Musk was also in attendance for that gathering
The argument reportedly dragged on for an ‘uncomfortable time.’ Musk told Rubio he was ‘good on TV’ suggesting he wasn’t good for much else.
Through it all, Trump sat in his chair, arms crossed, watching the fight play out.
Finally, the 78-year-old intervened. He defended Rubio for doing a ‘great job’ and pointed out he was very busy traveling and on TV and had an agency to run.
The New York Times described the meeting as a ‘potential turning point’ after Trump’s whirlwind first few weeks of his second term.
It also signaled for the first time that the president was willing to rein in Musk as his DOGE team’s work has caused chaos and confusion across the federal government.
Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio got into a heated argument during last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting at the White House
The meeting last Thursday was widely reported as Trump gathered his Cabinet and made it clear they are in charge of the hirings and firings, not Musk.
He told his top officials they need to use a ‘scalpel’ for the workforce cuts.
‘I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut,’ Trump said after the Cabinet meeting.
‘Elon and the group are going to be watching them, and if they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.’
Even before Musk clashed with Rubio, he also got into it with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over the state of the FAA’s equipment for tracking planes, the New York Times said.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was created by Trump to find waste, fraud and abuse
Duffy accused DOGE of trying to lay off air traffic controllers. He pointed out that there have been multiple plane crashes and questioned Musk’s team wanting him to fire air traffic controllers.
Musk claimed Duffy’s assertion was a lie to which the transportation secretary insisted it was not and that he had heard from them directly.
Musk responded by demanding names, the Times reported.
The hastily convened White House gathering came one day after Musk met with both House and Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Some GOP lawmakers have begun to express concerns over how the spending cuts were being carried out.
DOGE has been the target of multiple lawsuits as it rushes forward with its mission to root out waste, fraud and abuse, but thousands of federal workers have already been forced to defend their work and in many cases shown the door.
