WASHINGTON—Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet described the egregious waste of taxpayer dollars they are encountering — and ending — within their respective departments when they met with the president Monday.
The president sat down with his cabinet and Elon Musk around 11:00 a.m. in the White House. As the meeting concluded he described the meeting as a “very, very good cabinet meeting,” adding that the White House is “on our way to some tremendous numbers.”
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins described how her department recently “canceled a contract in New York educating transgender and queer farmers on food justice and food equality,” telling the cabinet members “I’m not even sure what that means, but apparently the last administration wanted to put our taxpayer dollars towards that.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright emphasized that President Joe Biden’s administration grew his department by 20% over the past four years, “all in an effort to reduce the production of energy in the United States and to make energy more expensive.”
“We are stewards of the American taxpayer dollars. That’s the job of everyone around this table, led by you,” Wright told the president. “We want to reverse that trajectory, and care about every dollar an American taxpayer gives us, and are we using it for the benefit of Americans.”
Trump, listening to his cabinet members describe cuts to their departments, said that the American people understand that his administration wants to “Make America Great Again,” arguing that “the country was riddled with fat.”
“We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world,” the president said.
Elon Musk, wearing a red hat, looks on as US President Donald Trump hosts a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also shared that while his department’s expenditures went up during the Biden administration, health care went down, and he argued that Elon Musk’s DOGE is helping HHS to “Make America Healthy Again.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described her visit to the southern border and told cabinet members that deportations are down by 50%. She also shared that she’ll be heading to El Salvador soon to meet with the country’s president and to see the prison where the United States deportees are being held.
During the conversation on the border, the president said in response to Noem: “Yesterday, I was speaking to somebody, I was checking on the border and they said there was literally nobody on this massive plaza, a plaza that would hold hundreds of thousands of people, there was literally no one there, there were no people. It’s been an amazing transformation very quickly. We’re getting the bad ones out first, and we’re taking them out. And there’s some really bad ones, REALLY bad ones, murderers.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Trump for his diplomacy, telling those gathered around the table that “The American people should be proud that we have a president that’s promoting peace and the end of conflict on this planet.”
Rubio noted that even as they spoke, they had teams on the ground in Saudi Arabia meeting with the Russians and Ukrainians in hopes of making progress towards peace, arguing that Trump is the only leader “on the planet” that can “bring the two sides together” and end the conflict.
“Ultimately,” he said, “I think the only chance we have for peace is through the president’s leadership.”
Many companies are coming back to the United States, Trump told the media as he concluded the meeting, predicting that around $4 trillion worth of companies are moving back.
“It’s going to be tremendous jobs, high paying jobs too,” the president said.
He credited their return not only to his tariffs, but to the 2024 election, reminding the world: “Remember, there are no tariffs if you build here!”
“The numbers that we are talking about are crazy,” Trump promised. “Beyond anybody’s wildest expectation.”
