Donald Trump held the first Cabinet meeting of his second term on Thursday, and it made plenty of headlines: The Pentagon has launched an investigation into the botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 American servicemembers dead; tariffs on Canada and Mexico may start early next month; Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House Friday.
But it was the attendance of a non-Cabinet member, the Department of Government Efficiency’s Elon Musk, that got the most attention. The extent of the coverage may have led one to believe this was the first time in history someone not in the Cabinet was invited to such a gathering – except that would be ignoring who had one of the most prominent seats in the room the last time a U.S. president convened his Cabinet.
Back in September, First Lady Jill Biden was at the head of the table for her husband’s first Cabinet meeting in almost a year. The media at the time either praised her presence or didn’t have a word to say about it. On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Buck Sexton, co-host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, to discuss the meeting and the outrage surrounding it.
Musk at the Meeting
Musk was at the White House Wednesday to present on the waste, fraud, and abuse the DOGE team is uncovering. He shed new light on the now-infamous email that was sent to federal employees over the weekend asking them to reply with their accomplishments from the previous week.
He clarified that the request was not meant to be a “performance review” but rather serve as a “pulse check” because of the concern that a segment of the federal workforce is deceased or composed of “fictional individuals that are collecting paycheck.”
He said the goal is to figure out “are these people real, are they alive, and can they write emails?” And Musk called it “a reasonable expectation.” The explanation came as the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees government employees, sent a letter to all agency heads ordering them to “undertake preparations to initiate large scale reductions in force.” The plans are due no later than March 13.
The Hypocritical Coverage
The Tesla founder’s presentation did little to quiet the media’s obsession with Musk’s role in the Trump administration. “It is one thing to have Jill Biden show up, but it is totally different to have Elon Musk show up and try to be accountable to the press and the Cabinet,” Megyn quipped. “That is a bridge too far; they are out of line and having Elon there.”
You need look no further, Megyn said, than the headlines to figure that out. CNN led with “Trump’s cabinet meeting serves as a backdrop to Musk’s powers.” The New York Times described it as “Musk’s cabinet cameo,” during which “the elephant in the room wore black.” The Guardian went even further with the headline “Trump cabinet flunkies hail wannabe Caesar and Elon, his oligarch pal.”
It is quite a contrast, Megyn noted, to how Jill Biden was received when she attended – and participated in – her husband’s Cabinet meeting last fall. The CNN headline after that gathering was “Biden directs Cabinet to run ‘through the tape’ in legacy-burnishing meeting.” And more than 20 paragraphs into the article, it mentioned “first lady Dr. Jill Biden shared an update on a White House women’s health research initiative.”
That was better than The New York Times did, however, because the paper of record did not reference her attendance at all. It was similarly left out of The Guardian coverage. “Didn’t say one word,” Megyn said. “But Elon? Bridge too far.”
The Partisan Outrage
Sexton called the attacks on Musk “increasingly desperate and pathetic” and said the work he is doing should not be a partisan issue. “Why is Elon the richest man in the world? It is because when everyone else says ‘this can’t be done,’ ‘this can’t be fixed,’ somehow this guy fixes it,” he explained. “That we have him involved in trying to right our government and figure out where a lot of this money is going, and where a lot of the bottlenecks are for transparency, and where the bureaucracy has just huddled together and decided they are completely unaccountable… should be a bipartisan dream come true.”
He gave the example of the promised crackdown on fraudulent Medicare payments as one example of how Democrats have boxed themselves in. “This has been going on for years and no one has done anything about it. If Elon Musk can stop that, does anyone want to be not in favor of it,” he asked. “Democrats have put themselves in a place where they have to root for the bad thing just because they want to oppose Trump, Elon, and everybody involved with them.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Sexton by tuning in to episode 1,015 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.