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The president defended Elon Musk’s role in seeking to slash budgets and cut payrolls as the young aides burrowing into federal agencies came under scrutiny.
President Trump said the Pentagon would be a point of attention for cost-cutting by Elon Musk. Credit… Kenny Holston/The New York Times Published Feb. 7, 2025 Updated Feb. 8, 2025, 11:02 a.m. ET Follow today’s live coverage of the Trump administration .
President Trump’s statement on Friday that he had directed Elon Musk to turn his budget-slashing initiative on the Pentagon underscored Mr. Musk’s rapidly expanding role in their charge to shrink the federal bureaucracy and stomp out any opposition to the president’s agenda.
At a White House news conference, Mr. Trump said Mr. Musk would also be examining the Education Department. It is one more corner of the government, from the Treasury Department to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now under the scrutiny of the band of young and inexperienced operatives under Mr. Musk’s direction.
In the first three weeks of the new administration, Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting team has swiftly inserted itself into at least 17 federal agencies, according to a tally by The New York Times.
Both the billionaire and Mr. Trump have defended the disruptive actions of his young aides, even as some of them have come under scrutiny for their past actions.
One Musk aide, Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former employee of X, resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal revealed that he had made racist posts on X. On Friday, Mr. Musk called for the Journal reporter to be fired and said he was reinstating Mr. Elez, a move that both the president and vice president said they supported.
“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X.
Another young aide, Edward Coristine, was fired in June 2022 from an internship at Path Network, an Arizona-based data security company, after “an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure,” the company said in a statement Friday. Bloomberg first reported his firing.
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