Assbackwards

That’s the way to do it: smash everything in sight and then pause to decide to take a more nuanced approach.

President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.

According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.

The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation.

Now he tells them. The government looks like Stepney at the height of the Blitz and now he tells them Musk doesn’t get to drop bombs.

Musk joined the conversation and indicated he was on board with Trump’s directive. According to one person familiar with the meeting, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had made some missteps — a message he shared earlier this week with members of Congress.

Yeah missteps, that’s what they were – missteps wearing boots the size of a container ship.

Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not to eject capable federal workers en masse.

Well that’s odd, seeing as how it’s what he’s been doing for the last several weeks.

Trump posted about the meeting on Truth Social after this story posted, promising to hold similar meetings every two weeks.

“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”

That fucking imbecile. He’s telling this as if we’re the ones who didn’t know it, when his little South African buddy used the hatchet and the axe and the nuclear weapon on the entire civil service for weeks on end.

The president later told reporters he wants Cabinet members to “keep all the people you want, everybody that you need.”

But he also said he wanted cuts, and that Musk would remain a power center: “If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

You can keep all the people you want, but you can’t keep all the people you want. You can keep your legs, but Elon will chop them off. You can keep your children, but Elon will slice them up. You can keep your house, but Elon will burn it down.

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