Newsman: US secretary of State’s public embrace of DOGE follows media reports of a blowup between Rubio and Elon Musk during a White House meeting last week that President Trump had with Cabinet secretaries. But, In a social media post Sunday, Trump pushed back at reports of hostility between Musk and Rubio. “ELON AND MARCO HAVE A GREAT RELATIONSHIP. ANY STATEMENT OTHER THAN THAT IS FAKE NEWS!!! DJT,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had dinner with Rubio and Musk Saturday night.
The Trump administration is canceling 83% of programs at the dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development after terminating 5,200 contracts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday as he thanked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for pushing the cuts.
Rubio’s public embrace of DOGE follows media reports of a blowup between Rubio and Musk during a White House meeting last week that President Donald Trump had with Cabinet secretaries.
“Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform,” Rubio said in a post on X.
Musk reciprocated with kind words of his own. “Tough, but necessary. Good working with you,” Musk replied. “The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State.”
The New York Times reported Rubio clashed with Musk last week over cuts led by the billionaire tech entrepreneur Musk, who serves as a White House senior adviser overseeing DOGE. Musk accused Rubio of failing to slash his staff during the meeting, while the secretary of State, like some other Cabinet secretaries, expressed frustration with Musk’s chainsaw approach to departments.
What’s left of USAID, which oversees U.S. foreign aid, has been moved under the jurisdiction of the State Department after DOGE worked aggressively last month to terminate thousands of USAID employees overseas and shut down the agency’s Washington headquarters.
Rubio said the canceled USAID contracts spent “billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” The cut programs include a range of humanitarian efforts across the world to address hunger, health care, water access and other critical needs.
“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department,” Rubio said.
At least four lawsuits are fighting the dismantling of USAID. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled Thursday that the Trump administration must make some payments to foreign aid contractors – the government has estimated the total disputed amount at nearly $2 billion – by Monday.
