Pres. Trump gives Elon Musk and DOGE permission to look at Pentagon

Welcome to Meet the Press Now, I'm Kristen Welker in Washington, where President Trump is forging ahead with sweeping changes to the federal government and as his allies in Congress are struggling to keep up with his demands. This afternoon, the president answered questions from reporters after meeting with Japan's prime minister, acknowledging that he's allowing tech billionaire Elon Musk and his team at Doge to look at nearly every federal agency and You directed Elon Musk to review Pentagon spending given it's the biggest discretionary spending in the federal budget? Yes, I have Pentagon education, just about everything. We're going to go through everything. I've instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And, you know, sadly, you'll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don't think proportionally you're going to see anything like we just saw. Now, my NBC News colleague Garrett Hake later pressed the president on Musk's unprecedented access inside the federal government. Is there anything you've told Elon Musk he cannot touch? Well, we haven't discussed that much. I'll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He's got a very capable group of people. Very, very, very, very capable. They know what they're doing. But I will pick out a target and I say go in. There could be areas that we won't. But I think everything's fertile. You know, we're a government. We have to be open. And as an open government, I don't know, I guess you could say maybe some high intelligence or something. And I'll do that myself if I have to. It comes as President Trump and Mr. Musk are moving forward with drastic cuts to federal agencies, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has seen its staff reduced from about 5,000 Foreign Service officers to less than 300 workers. Other agencies have been put on notice of potentially drastic cuts as well. President Trump's moves come as he seeks cooperation from congressional Republicans on his sweeping legislative agenda, which is running up against a deadline to fund the government and prevent a shutdown next month. After a marathon five hour meeting at the White House yesterday, it is clear that major divisions remain inside the House Republican Conference. As President Trump pushes for trillions of dollars in tax cuts and hardline Republicans push for trillions of dollars in government spending cuts. House Speaker Mike Johnson provided this update to reporters earlier today. If we put this on a short timetable and we move it as quickly and aggressively as we are planning to do, we can accomplish the entire agenda in one big, beautiful bill. And you expect to be working through the Super Bowl? Yes, sadly, I'll be with the president of the suite and this will be one of the big topics of discussion. So we need to keep the president and his team fully apprised on the developments. We have been up to this point. There'll be a few more developments today, so I'll be addressing that with him and let me know where we are. Are you still committing to make this package deficit neutral? That's our that's our commitment. That's what we're trying to achieve. Yes. NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell joins me now. Also with me is NBC News Chief Capitol Hill Correspondent Ryan Nobles, along with me, Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times and an NBC News contributor. Kelly, let me start with you here at the desk. Let's talk broadly speaking about what we just heard at that press conference. President Trump saying that, yes, he is giving Elon Musk the green light to go into the Pentagon. What were your key takeaways from what you heard today? Notably, the vice president is sitting in the front row, but there was all the talk about Elon Musk and what his portfolio is in this and it seems quite expansive. The president at the same time, he said he didn't really talk about it with him that much, but seems to have given him wide berth to look at departments that, in fact, could present conflicts at the Department of Defense. Elon Musk and his company have contracts with the Department of Defense. So could he possibly be accessing competitive information there? He's also given them the charge of looking at the education department. And the president repeatedly is talking in very accusatory terms about corruption in government. There is certainly a question about how you debate spending and whether spending might be bloated in places. Corruption is a much different thing. But he talks about that quite freely and wants to root it out, even though a lot of what we're talking about has been approved by Congress. What is so notable is that he is doing all of this unilaterally without Congress, and that is the legal challenge that we are seeing to so many of these actions. So much of this government attempts to slash government spending is that, well, look, Congress approved this. Do you anticipate we're going to see this pace continue, this unilateral sledgehammer approach to slashing government spending? It is his view of the presidency. He seems to be disregarding Article 1 of the Constitution, which gives all that power to Congress. And Democrats are talking about it, but Republicans are really not. And so the courts seem to be the only lever at this point to put speed bumps in front of the president on these matters to say, is it lawful? Does there need to be a pause? Have all the equities been considered? And when it comes to some of this, the president is saying they're identifying a lot. And he talked about transparency. Well, there's not much transparency with the Doge effort. We don't know who the players are. We don't know what they're rooting out. We don't know what they're identifying. And so if the president is talking transparency, the American people typically like that. But we have not really seen it yet. Yeah, we're going to talk to Ryan about this. But let me start with you, Kel, which is the president's legislative agenda, which is robust. He wants funding for his mass deportation plan. He wants massive tax cuts. He wants to extend the 2017 Trump era tax cuts. Are you getting any clarity about what the path forward looks like there? Well, certainly the president has indicated that he is willing to give a little room for the mechanics of Congress, recognizing that there are ways to package some of these programs that might be better in one or two bills and those kinds of things. And I think he is willing to cede a little ground when Thune and Speaker Johnson tell him about kind of the procedures. But in terms of what he wants, you're right. He wants all the money required for deportations. He wants those to go forward. And those tax cuts, which were a big part of his first term, he wants extended and expanded, including some of the things he campaigned on, like no tax on Social Security, no tax on tips and so forth. All of that typically needs a way to pay for it. Yeah. And it costs about nine trillion dollars. If you're talking about the entire tax package, Ryan Nobles, let me bring you into this. There was that five hour meeting at the White House on Thursday. Did anything come of it? I was told it was productive, but they still haven't presented a specific piece of legislation to start moving forward. Am I right about that? Yeah, I mean, I guess they made progress. I mean, everything they're talking about right now is behind closed doors. But the speaker indicated today that he felt confident that they would have some sort of a budget resolution as early as Monday, that it could include the debt ceiling. It could include a whole host of other things. But it's clear that the Senate is not as patient as the House would like them to be. Normally, this process begins in the House and then the Senate takes whatever the House provides them and picks it apart. The Senate doesn't want to wait anymore. And we saw Lindsey Graham produce his own budget resolution today to begin that process on the Senate side. So there's going to be competing documents here that the two sides are going to have to work from. And, you know, it may be up to Donald Trump to pick which one he likes the most and how this process plays itself out. But they can't even really begin this conversation until they talk about exactly how much money they want to spend and how much money they want to cut. And that process doesn't begin until we see a document. Yeah, it's a great point, Ryan. And as I was just discussing with Kelly, one of the big takeaways and headlines from the president's press conference today is that he's now directing Elon Musk to go into the Pentagon to find cuts there. What is the reaction on Capitol Hill been so far to that? Well, every Republican that you ask about Elon Musk, they are they welcome it with open arms. They have no problem with it. They want him to look at every single aspect of government and they are not at all concerned about the level of authority that Donald Trump is affording him at this point. Every single Democrat you talk to views it akin to the end of the democracy. They believe that it is borderline illegal. They believe that he has massive conflicts of interest that specifically would be crystallized if he were to look into the Pentagon's budget because of the massive contracts that the company he owns hold, many of which are directly tied to the Department of Defense. So, you know, there aren't there is not very much that Republicans and Democrats agree upon on Capitol Hill. But there is probably no issue that they are more polarized on than the role that Elon Musk is playing in this early days of the Trump administration. Republicans are fully embracing it and Democrats are fully rejecting it. And Ryan, you know, this all comes, of course, as a potential government shutdown is looming large. It's just over a month away. We saw back in December the government nearly shut down. How is that adding urgency to all of this? And frankly, how does this play into whatever timeline we might see in terms of the agenda on the Hill? Well, Kristen, it probably doesn't shock you to find out. But one of the things that has always vexed me in the time that I've covered Congress is how little urgency there is when we approach a spending deadline. A month out, you'd think that they have four years to solve this crisis. Nobody seems to be freaking out about the fact that we are closing in on a budget deadline and that we're closing in on one at such a precarious time where the parties are so far apart and there would need to be bipartisan support to get something over the finish line. You know, Chip Roy, who is, of course, the budget hawk from Texas who feels emboldened by the election results and wants there to be real significant change, actually floated the idea of a continuing resolution today. He hates continuing resolutions, but he suggested to me that these continuing resolutions essentially adopt some of the budget cuts that Elon Musk is already attempting to employ. For instance, a continuing resolution that zeroes out the USAID budget. There's no universe in which you get a single Democratic vote for something like that, even if it means that the budget's going or that the government is going to shut down. So, you know, at this point, I do not see how they get to an agreement by that deadline that is bipartisan enough because it would still need 60 votes in the Senate. This to keep the government open. And Republicans are not just going to rubber stamp the budget as it currently exists. And Democrats are not going to go for a single budget cut, even if it's for a temporary period of time so that the appropriations process can play itself out. So I think this is a much bigger problem than everyone up here seems to think it is, at least at this point. Well, you underscore just how complicated, how uphill the road may be to averting a government shutdown. Ryan, thanks for that. Kelly, let me go back to you. My blood pressure's up after that. I don't know about yours, but I didn't realize it was going to be that hard. I know. Kelly, before I go to Peter Baker for the bigger picture, look, you know, there was also some news on the foreign policy front today. President Trump floating that he might meet with President Zelensky at the White House next week. That's significant. He has promised as a candidate he was going to end the war in Ukraine. What are you hearing about that? And he's got some other leader meetings next week, too. And I've pressed him on conversations with Putin in the Oval Office as the pool reporter, and he has been very reluctant to give details, which for him is unusual. And so he's been saying there have been conversations ongoing. So I think what I glean from that is that he would like to get some resolution. And certainly it is harder than it looks. And he would like to see if one option is if you kind of constrain the U.S. support for Ukraine, perhaps it hastens a result. He also again talked about Kim Jong-un in North Korea being a friend he wants to see again. Fascinating. We'll have to see how that piece of his foreign policy plays out. Kelly O'Donnell, thank you so much. Great to see you here in person. Peter Baker, let me turn to you. Let's look at the big picture here. President Trump saying he's given Elon Musk and Doge permission to look at the Pentagon when Garrett pressed him. Are there any limits? He didn't really suggest that there were any. What do you make of this relationship right now, Peter? Well, it's an extraordinary one and one that was captured on the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine, where you see an image of Elon Musk's sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. That's not an image that is designed to appeal to Donald Trump, who doesn't like it when other people steal his thunder. And he particularly doesn't like the idea that he is, Elon Musk, is portrayed as sort of the quasi president or prime minister. Remember four or eight years ago when Steve Bannon was put on the cover of Time magazine and basically portrayed as the power behind the throne, it definitely soured the relationship that he had with Trump. And by August of that year, he was out. So, you know, there's been a lot of people watching to see whether that same dynamic might play out here. You've got two very big egos, two billionaires, two men with strong views about things. How long can that team work in an atmosphere where Trump doesn't always appreciate, you know, strong wills that don't subordinate themselves to him? So far, you saw Elon Musk just put on social media just today how amazing he thinks Donald Trump is. The reason, obviously, he would do something like that is to stroke the ego of the president so he wouldn't be upset about the Time magazine cover or wouldn't be upset about all the coverage about how Elon Musk is the one really running the government right now. But that's a very fraught and complicated dynamic here. And remember, they were not friends until just a few months ago. So there's not a long history here. You know, it's so fascinating to remember with you, Peter, that turning point of when Steve Bannon was on the cover of Time magazine. And of course, now Steve Bannon is an ally to President Trump. He's outside the White House. He's been very critical of Elon Musk. And I think he sort of represents the fact that there is this growing frustration inside some quarters of Trump's orbit where they do feel frustrated that Musk is starting to wear out his welcome. What do you make of that? Is anyone going to say that directly to President Trump? That's a really good question. I don't know. But you're right. There are some people who think he's worn out as well. Remember, there are a lot of people who've been around Trump now for a number of years, some going back eight, 10 years. And now suddenly Elon Musk has been, you know, since July of last year, made himself out to be the number one surrogate. Not everybody likes that. I've heard senior Trump people say, I'm his best friend, actually, not Elon Musk. So, you know, there's a jealousy factor there among other people in that orbit. But they all defer to Trump. Nobody's going to try to, like, push Trump when Trump's not ready to be pushed. But when they sense that Trump is losing his own patience, you can bet that at least some people around him who will be happy to, you know, stick the knife in. Peter, let me ask you before I let you go about what Ryan and I were discussing this uphill battle in Congress to try to get the president's agenda passed. Let's just take the funding for the president's mass deportation plan. The Republican Party can only afford to lose one vote right now in the House to act on any piece of Trump's agenda if they don't have Democrats' support. How do you see this playing out on the Hill? It's a great question, and I don't know the answer to that. You're absolutely right. I cannot see for the life of me Democrats going along with any final budget spending plan that does anything near what Trump is talking about doing. It would be politically unthinkable for them to support tax cuts that would go primarily to the rich if that's the way they see the final package going. It would be hard to imagine, as Ryan said, if for any of them supporting zeroing out the U.S. Agency for National Development, giving Trump or Elon Musk the power to do some of the things he's already doing in terms of paring down the federal workforce. All of this is anathema to Democrats, and I think they're perfectly happy to let the Republicans own it. They want to do it, fine, let them pass it. But you're right, the margins are so narrow, so narrow, in fact, that Elise Stefanik, who has been tapped by President Trump to be his U.N. ambassador, can't be confirmed right now because they still need her vote in the House. Can't afford to lose that vote. It's a great data point to keep in mind. Peter Baker, as always, thank you for your perspective. Really appreciate it. Great to see you on this Friday. Thanks for watching. Stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media.