Musk joins Trump’s first cabinet meeting
US President Donald Trump warned anyone unhappy with Elon Musk’s presence will be removed from the cabinet meeting.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is neither a cabinet member nor elected to office, was the first to speak to Trump’s new team in the Cabinet room on Thursday (AEDT).
“Anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, then we’ll throw them out of here,” Trump said.
“They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this. And some disagree a little bit.
“But I will tell you for the most part, I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled.”
Musk is an adviser to Trump and heads his Department of Government Efficiency.
Standing up to speak, Musk said he was “tech support” and revealed he had received a lot of death threats for his work slashing government spending and hundreds of federal jobs.
He said a controversial email last weekend, which asked federal employees to explain their jobs, was a “pulse check review” aimed at checking who was alive.
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“We think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead. Which is probably why they can’t respond,” Musk said.
“Some people who are not real people, like they’re literally fictional individuals that are collecting pay checks.
“We’re literally trying to figure out, are these people real, are they alive and can they write an email?”
CNN reports that Musk’s directives to federal workers have begun to grate on Cabinet secretaries, who were given no heads-up about the email, which asked: “What did you do last week?”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit Washington DC on Friday (local time).
Also at Thursday’s cabinet meeting, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would visit Washington DC on Friday (local time) to sign an agreement on rare earth minerals and other topics.
But Zelensky said success would depend on the US providing guarantees to protect the future security of Ukraine if there was any further Russian aggression after a peace deal.
A copy of the agreement seen by Reuters and dated February 25 did not spell out concrete security guarantees under the deal.
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“The government of the United States of America supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace,” it said.
The deal is part of a broader effort to end the war with Russia and will lay the groundwork for long-term co-operation between Ukraine and the US, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told Reuters.
“This agreement signifies our commitment to lasting peace and strong partnership, as well as the US desire to participate in Ukraine’s reconstruction,” she said in a written statement.
Zelensky said the success of Ukraine’s minerals deal with the US hinged on his looming talks with Trump.
The deal is at the heart of Ukraine’s push to win over Trump’s support – including security guarantees – as he strives to clinch a rapid end to the war with Russia.
The Ukrainian government was poised to approve the text of the agreement later on Wednesday (local time), so that it could be signed by both sides, the prime minister said.
Zelensky will go to Washington DC on Friday to meet Trump.
“This deal could be a great success or it could pass quietly. And the big success depends on our conversation with President Trump,” Zelensky said.
He said both sides were still working on organising his potential visit to sign the deal after a tumultuous week in which the two leaders have exchanged hostile remarks, including Trump calling Zelensky a dictator.
Under the wording of the agreement titled “Bilateral Agreement Establishing Terms and Conditions for a Reconstruction Investment Fund,” Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of “all revenues earned from the future monetisation of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets”.
Zelensky said the exact amounts and investments would be spelled out in a further agreement to set up the fund.
Those proceeds would go into a fund jointly owned and managed by the US and Ukraine, the wording of the agreement seen by Reuters says.
The agreement does not name the assets in question but says they would include deposits of minerals, oil, natural gas and other extractable materials as well as other infrastructure such as LNG terminals and ports.
The list would be determined in a future agreement on the fund, while the document does not spell out exactly how much money would be generated for the US or over what time frame.
In a comment aimed at calming the fears of worried Ukrainians, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine would never “sign or consider … a colonial treaty that did not take into account the interests of the state”.
