Elon Musk, whose power far outweighs his title or approval rating, will be front and center at the first Cabinet meeting of Donald Trump’s second term on Wednesday.
“Elon, considering he is working alongside the president and our Cabinet secretaries—this entire administration will be in attendance tomorrow just to talk about DOGE’s efforts,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
But Leavitt repeatedly declined to clarify confusion over whether Musk is the administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency.
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So who does run the bureaucracy-trimming task force Musk has claimed credit for leading, reporters in the White House briefing room asked.
“I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium,” Leavitt, 27, the youngest White House press secretary in history, responded. “I’m happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we’ve been incredibly transparent about the way the DOGE is working.”
It wasn’t until hours later, after multiple reports surfaced, that the White House relented and confirmed that Amy Gleason, a 55-year-old mother of two who is currently in Mexico, is the interim leader of DOGE—not Musk. Gleason previously worked at the United States Digital Service during Trump’s first term.
It remains unclear what Musk’s official role with the panel is, exactly.
Leavitt was similarly unable to resolve government-wide bewilderment over Musk’s email ultimatum demanding that federal employees in every agency list five accomplishments or risk termination.
Recent polls show that most Americans disapprove of Musk’s chainsaw-sized cuts and turbulence to the federal workforce. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted last week showed 34% of respondents said they approve of Musk’s job performance, compared to 49% who disapprove and 14% who are unsure.
Leavitt said the president has made it clear that “he loves everything Elon is doing, and he wants him to be even more aggressive because DOGE, thus far, has proven incredibly successful in making our government more efficient.”
“Let me be very clear: the president and Elon and his entire Cabinet are working as one unified team,” she said.
Leavitt added that Musk is a central part of that team effort and she pushed back on questions about Cabinet and other top officials who instructed their agency employees to ignore Musk’s demand to list five things they accomplished last week or face termination.
“Nobody was caught off guard,” she said, insisting that the president respected each agency official’s individual decision to direct staff not to respond to Musk’s “what did you do last week” ultimatum.
