policy. now we can relax and enjoy our retirement as we had planned. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance. stuart: all right. it is 11:00're in new york city. along the eastern sea board and wednesday, february 26th. in a matter of moments, president trump holding first cabinet meeting of the second term and elon musk will be there. trump said his cabinet is happy with musk and see it all live once it starts. there's been a selling recently and dow up nearly 200 and nasdaq up 220 points.

big tech all in the red recently but all in the green this morning. only apple is down, which reports this afternoon. nvidia up $a 5. that's 4% and amazon, microsoft and alphabet all on the upside. only apple it sown. check the 10 year treasury yield. 4.30%. now this elon musk will attend president trump's first full cabinet meeting and tell them how to run their department and telling them who to fire and which programs to cut. the next phase of trump's large scale work force cuts already underway. the office of personnel management along with office of management and budget have reportedly prepared a memo telling government agencies to prepare for large scale firings and the memo asks for these departments to submit reorganization plans by march 13th, just get it done and

fast. and today mussing comes face-to-face with the people whose departments he's chopping up and musk is not backing down and insists that federal workers tell him in writing what they accomplished last week. five bullet points will do the trick. he's contentious of those that fail to respond and on x, used all caps to say "have you ever witnessed such incompetence and contempt for how your taxes are being spent". he's hostile to government workers and he's not likely to quality the doge guys off. so far president trump has given elon his full support on truth social, the president wrote all cabinet members are extremely happy with elon. the media will see that at the cabinet meeting this morning. when the pete sergeant over, expect the president to address the media he cannot resist cameras and this afternoon, martha maccallum presenting the story on fox and no doubt covering this meeting. fortunately martha is with me

right now. been a long time sings i saw a cabinet meeting on tv. >> president trump invented this style of cabinet meeting and we're about to see something really fascinating and it's a free meeting where you betting be on your toes if you're a cabinet member and if the press asks a question that's in your area, president trump will probably answer a bit of it then say okay, stuart, you're on. this is the kind of environment the business channel at fox should be comfortable with. this is a board meeting, okay, and the shareholders are essentially in the room, and they want to know that the department of government efficiency is doing exactly that. it is making the government more efficient. ask there's a lot of stories about the cabinet officials and seeing push-back on intelligent issues and the like about the e-mail with the five things that's a brilliant idea honestly. what you're seeing is that can't

believe all the go garbage i'm finding and there's all this friction and seems these cabinet officials feel there is plenty to cut now that they've gotten into the office and opening up. stuart: i think that's what we're going to hear today. what are you doing to cut wasteful spending in your department? >> start there and build up and then you can can start taking care of business. stuart: one more for you, karoline leavitt announced changes to the press pool. now, that's the group of journalists allowed into smaller spaces, oval office or air force one. listen. >> we are going to give the power back to the people that read your papers and watch television shows and listen to radio stations. moving fared, the white house press pool will be determined by the white house press team. legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool

for decades will still be allowed to join. fear not, but we will also be offering the privilege of well deserving outlets never allowed to share in the aurosome responsibility. we'll continue the rotation amongst the five major television networks to ensure the president's remarks are heard far and wide around this world. stuart: big changes there, martha. what do you think? >> big change and jacqui heinrich, one of our white house correspondents in the front row doing an excellent job was not pleased by this discussion. this announcement yesterday also. you do hear karoline leavitt say the legacy organizations will continue to have that front row seat. and i think they've done some interesting things with rotating that new media seat because we've seen people, you know, that are with all different kind of organizations in those seats, but i think the white house has to be careful. there's been a couple instances recently where you have these ridiculous softball questions like how amazing are you thrown

at president trump. you know, i don't think he needs that. he's doing the job, he's great at presenting how he sees the progress and the job of the press is to challenge. it's not to tear down, and that's where we've been, i think, in my ways and not to tear down and not to wake up out of bed and what can i do to destroy this presidency. too challenging to ask questions and a lot of good questions to be asked around on what's going on with ukraine and everything else. i hope the white house will embrace challenging questions that are coming from a good place for representing the press of the american people. stuart: he loves the cameras and answering questions. he loves it. >> answered thousands of them so far, which i think is fantastic. stuart: seven times more than biden in one time frame. stuart: times have changed. martha, watching you on the story complete with coverage of cabinet meeting. 3:00 p.m. eastern only on fox news channel. thanks, martha.

back to the markets and still got the rally in front and remember we've seen an awful lot of selling recently. mark tepper with me. frame work for the tax work extension passed in the house s. that part of the reason why we've got this rally? looks like we'll get extension of taxes. >> without a doubt, i've said this before if we didn't get that extension of the tax cuts by somewhere around july 1, july 15th, that the market would sell off. only see that extended but, stu, there's optimism surrounding nvidia and a lot of pessimism lately and nice turn of events there and then just a bit of relief rally as well. forced rate down days and getting a bit of relief there.

stuart: big afternoon on the nvidia earnings report and that's going to be the call when jenson wong lays out where he sees everything going. that gives up everything and not quite absolutely stellar and we're going gangbusters forever. >> only way is that this ai revolution theme has been carrying the market. investors are looking at these company earning ands saying ai will help companies to do more with less; right. that's ai automation. look, jenson wong, here's what i expect out of him. i expect him to come out and say that deepseek is not a threat. i expect him to come out and say hyper-er scalers are not going to scale back on purchases since the deepseek threat and i think the hyper-scalers have increased cap x by 100 billion and they'll continue to order stuff and

nvidia right now is trading exactly where it was like nine months ago. that's pretty incredible. it's done nothing over the last nine months. this stop is going to move higher and implied move today is 9-10% in either direction. that's going to be a big deal. if they don't come through, you'll see a huge selloff. that's not going to happen. they're not going to disappoint. stuart: stay with me, please. got me through the hour. jenson wong going to discuss the company's earnings reports on the claman countdown. tune in at 4:00 p.m. eastern height here at fox business and jenson wong tomorrow. unveiling the alexa at the showcase in the city. madison, what's special about the new ai powered alexa?

madison: hey, stuart, we're in the presentation and i came out to give you this report and alexa has been completely re-architectured and now taking about alexa plus and we have video and less than an hour ago and cleat learfield img architecture and re-imagined what this personal assisting device was always intended to b. they built it off the amazon structure and anthropic, and what goes into this alexa is now it's going to be more interactive and say the name once to get it to respond and have a conversation. alexa can actually recognize your tone and moderate her responses to match your tone and your mood. it can do things like look up a recipe, actually order the ingredients for said recipe for you, book a babysitter and put it all on your calendar. take a listen to this. >> she's smarter than ever before but also approachable,

which i think is so critical and intimidation factor of ai is gone. she's useful. she's useful. there to help you complete tasks and plan a date but she can book a restaurant and text the babysitter. she'll be a shopper and find what you're looking for, that gift, and order it for you, ship it, and gift wrap it. she can book a trip. madison: sounds like a lot of incredible promises and that's what the amazon team is pushing saying things like "your new best friend in the digital world". they say the smart home has been transformed with the new alexa and there's no more alex so speak. there's a conversation and also integration with the ring doorbells that's all in with your home. amazon led the space coming to ai and we've seen such a

transformation and now there's a chatgpts and amazon had to catch up with other players in the space. good news is there's all this hardware in the homes and families across america have amazon alexa devices that now posedly will be able to connect directly to the amazon plus feature. is this going to cost more? we don't have the answer yet and when the presentation wraps, we'll have that and also have an interview with the vp of alexa coming up this afternoon. amazon is saying this will be your new best friend and digital assistant making everything easier and definitely a hope for the team leading ai and kind of behind the other players in the space. stu. stuart: it occurs to me that all over the country alexas are responding and going off because of what we've just heard. madison: sorry. stuart: you're doing fine, madison. so problem at all. we're waiting for president

trump's cabinet meeting to begin and you're going to see it live right here on varney after this, we hope. maya knows how quality care can bring out a smile. but it's been a few dog years since she was able to enjoy a smile of her own. good thing aspen dental offers affordable, complete care all in one place. and new patients without insurance get 29 dollar exams and xrays. plus 20% off treatment plans for everyone. loving our patients unconditionally. it's one more way aspen dental is in your corner.

stuart: gnomes from now, president trump starts his cabinet meeting and elon musk will be in attendance and you, the viewer, will be able to see the entire cabinet meeting on live television. this is different. we've never seen anything like this -- well, not since trump's first term. we've not seen open cabinet meetings open to a live news audience. mark and lauren, martha maccallum said this is a very new thing like trump invented them going for abuse and fraud and what are you doing about it? >> american voters have spoke and want transparency and what president trump intends on delivering and more transparency about what's going on within our government. fraud, abuse, waste and all those things and super important and americans will appreciate actually getting to see what's going on. lauren: and elon musk is there

and there's some criticism about that, but might i remind viewers that joe biden attended a cabinet meeting. you don't have to be an elected representative to be there. it sh shows cutting waste and fraud out of the government. stuart: congressman carlos gimenez inez with us and he's a floridean congressman and have you seen a transparency as -- presidency as transparent as this one? >> no, actually i haven't seen a president as transparent as this one. i'm really glad he's doing it and doing really innovate i things and the american people are going to be able to see what happens at a wack net meeting and they'll be fab nated. stuart: like a board meeting where the president points to various cabinet members and said what have you done for me in terms of cutting waste and abuse?

is that what it's going to be like? >> maybe something like that but olekowski the things that can be discussed in the open of what the direction that the president wants to take america and also what direction that he wants that particular agency to go in. that's also a really good place where all the secretaries have a change of ideas and advise the president and that's what's going for them in miami dade county, we'd get together and stop that and going for them for the secretaries on the way that he wants to carry america forward, what he wants to get done and going to get that done. stuart: we're told that the path to change is moving rapidly and the office of personnel management is enjoying a list of people to fire and the cabinet members haven't been told to

come up with a plan how they're gone to reform their own departments on march 13th. this is breaking the pace, isn't it? >> yeah, it's something that cannot be done. when you put your nose to the grindstone and grind it out, those agency heads need to be involved and how their agencies will be trimmed down. they're the ones that will be running those agencies and they're the ones that know exactly what they mean and frankly they also know where the land mines are. i'm glad the agency has said we're going to be involved in reducing the size of the vernment. they're going to be given targets and then they should be free to go about those targets so they get the most efficient department they can but also delivering services to the american people. stuartis it politically popular among average voters? i ask because the democrats are screaming about the hurt that's coming from the cuts. >> well, i can give you an

example. when i was the mayor of miami dade county, in my first month we reduced the number of departments 44 to 26 and know what happened? nothing. we got a more efficient government and delivered services and it was very popular in miami dade county. i think it's going to be very popular across the nation. we all hate fraud, waste and abuse. this government is way too bloated. it's been needing this for a long time and i'm glad that president trump was serious about it and is getting to work. stuart: yeah, i mean, i think president trump is the only one who is source about cutting wasteful spending in government. lots of people propose it but never seen it done. last word to you, congressman. >> look, like i said, it's all governments seeing bureaucracy going for them and cleanup every once in a while and going for them bloating going for them and now you get back to them and

getting rid of a lot of employees that you don't need and going to slow you down and deliver better services to the american people and they get to keep some of the tax money and we're not going to be spending on actually people that really aren't necessary and also are overregulating the heck out of america. it's really a good exercise and something that was needed for a long, long time. stuart: something called common sense. congressman, thank you very much. always a pleasure. getting back to the markets, please. i see green, plenty of it too. especially the nasdaq up 1.25% and dow up 176. mark temer with me. i want to talk about tesla. >> okay. stuart: musk is in the cabinet meeting with it starts and is that detracting from his ability to run tesla, the stock is way down. >> i was actually as you started

talking tesla, that's what i was going to say. it may be time. if you really want to boost tesla's stock, there are people boycotting tesla and wanting to sell them because they don't appreciate what elon is doing politically. maybe it's -- look, i love elon musk so i don't want this taken the wrong way, but maybe time for him to step aside as ceo of tesla and time to name a successor and he's chairman of the board and all that and he's involved, but maybe from a imaging standpoint it could help tesla's stock. i'm a bit concerned about that. stuart: very interesting. lauren: elon musk has more than half of his wealth, fortune tied up in tesla so the losses, i mean, just yesterday his net worth, i don't think he cares and worth like 400 billion and dropped by 22 billion just like that because it's so concentrated but remember, he owns many companies and the other one is the government contractor spacex and star link.

>> worth over $300 billion and x ai over 75 billion and he's got a lot of companies out there. one man can only do so much. stuart: he's a hand on guy. willing to step away from from tesla for this position? >> no, it was a hypothetical. look, if you want to win back some of the people who are currently boycotting tesla vehicles and that's why sales were down 45% in europe, then you got to do some sort of facelift and some sort of makeover and maybe that's the right move even outside of the fallen sales. he's going a lot and has a lot on his plate. stuart: the stock below 300 a share. i have time for this. you brought along a stock pick and it's intriguing and digital realty trust. >> i talked about this before. stuart: yes, but there's losey numbers on real estate and new home sales. >> data center read and nothing to do with homes.

data center reach and this is going to hinge on every single word you hear out of jenson huang later today. look, this thing is down roughly 20% from where it was prior to the deepseek thing. and belief that maybe you don't need as much data centers. you're going to continue to need data centers and could easily re-rate over the course of the next couple of weeks and could be back to $200 like that. stuart: we hope. that would be nice to see, wouldn't it? mark, good stuff. thanks for being with me. we're waiting for president trump's cabinet meeting to begin. you'll see it live right here when it starts. more varney after this. ♪

patients who have sensitive teeth but also want whiter teeth they have to make a choice one versus the other. sensodyne clinical white provides two shades whiter teeth as well as providing 24/7 sensitivity protection. patients are going to love to see sensodyne on the shelf.

stuart: republican governor of alaska joining us now. mike dunleavy with us. the cabinet meeting is about to start and elon musk is there. what do outrebounded make of musk's role in government so far? >> i think that the president views elon as an eye without government looking in and how

they see government functioning and what's the response of basement when people need things for example, permitting or understanding a myriad of laws ethnicity, et cetera, et cetera and there's a person with a view of the prior administration and taking a look at government from a public perspective as opposed to bureaucrat or elected official's perspective. i think it's a good thing to have. stuart: senator tim cain wants to end the energy emergency. alaska is a energy state f. you end the national energy emergency, the nat gas business take as huge hit. is that correct? >> well, i think the -- i mean, i think recognizing that we need to produce more energy, which we do if we want to get ahead of the ai electrification of the world, we're woefully behind on transmission, generation and gas has taken a beating and moratorium on exporting gas and

we have to send to the market and investors that we're serious about energy and serious about making it a long term commitment and not rip sawing back and forth. that's the biggest problem in alaska and certainly america as well. what's the certainty of investment and are we going to stay the course or is political the ways of politics going to change. that's a danger and we need to stay the course. stuart: can alaska increase its oil production significantly? >>ing a soughtly. stuart: in the near future? >> absolutely. we have the capacity in the pipeline and 2 million-barrel as day and down to 500,000 and infrastructure is there and the port and fields and we know where the oil is and absolutely and i told interior -- secretary doug burgum and energy secretary wright just let us do what we do best. as long as we're not harming anybody, let us produce oil and gas and let us mine our minerals and we could be the solution to

so many problems for america in our allies and absolutely. stuart: s you could produce on extra 2 million barrels of oil a day within six months or a year? >> no, no, no: we are going to be able to produce 700,000 barrels over the next couple of years but, stuart, what's important is that we have the ability to produce even more if we get certainty on permit and a lack of court cases and more in the state of alaska and if we're allowed increase $499,000 barrels we have now and several hundred thousand barrels significantly in the short midterm and there's billions and billions and billions of barrels left in alaska that could be produced to help this country. stuart: governor dunleavy, hope you can get out there and drill, baby, drill. thank you, house republicans advanced frame work for president trump's one big

beautiful bill. this includes extension of trump's tax cuts. hillary vaughn on capitol hill. hillary, what comes next? reporter: stuart, one big beautiful bill has a lot of blank pages in it and the devil is in the details and house committees are getting to work on today. nergy home going to be pretty? no. a bit messy? yeah, it is. i adopt want to get ahead of my skis on what's going to be reduced or the savings that we're going to find or cuts we're going to make. reporter: the road map focuses on funding the border and military raising the national debt and tax cuts and with that extra spending, speaker johnson promising republicans they'll come up with $2 trillion in spending cuts and each committee tasked with finding share of the cuts including house energy and commerce committee and spending authority includes medicare and medicaid and republicans have

prosperitied will not be touched spent -- except to root out waste and fraud. >> last night, almost every single house republican signed their names to what would be the largest medicaid cuts in american history. why did republicans do it? to cut taxes for the billionaires club. reporter: missing in the house bill and making president trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent and trump saying this morning "i hope the house and senate are able to agree on making the tax cuts permanent so whatever the house comes up with, the senate is going to have their say". we know that speaker johnson senate majority leader thune are headed to the white house to huddle with treasury secretary scott bessent and discuss strike thaty and the way forward. stuart: edward lawrence is at the white house waiting for the cabinet meeting to begin. edward, the president said on

truth social earlier that everyone is going to get along just fine with elon musk. what do you say to that? reporter: that's probably what you're going to see and see elon musk answer a lot of questions and we do now have from fox digital has obtained a memo here and i have it saying that department heads need to plan for large scale reduction in work force by march 13th and have to have a plan for that reduction in work force. i'm sure you're going to hear about that at the cabinet meeting about how president trump wants to streamline government and make it nor efficient and that gos directly to what elon musk is doing. we know from the white house that elon musk is not the administrator of doge but he's a special government employee. there's an actual administrator but he sort of directs the direction that doge should go in and look at and at the moment, they seem to be in the cost cutting modes related to shrinking the size of government because that is apparently going to have happen now by march 13th. stuart: who knew just a few

weeks ago we would be sitting here about to see on television live cabinet meeting that included elon musk and how he's going to trim down government. who knew that? i mean, who saw that happening? i don't think you or i did. >> reporter: no, and things are moving quickly and tech industry moves quickly and seems to be moving at pace of almost technology advancements and this trump administration over the past four weeks has done more than what i could remember, sever administrations have done and he keeps moving forward and moving forward and plans ongoing and on all fronts and not just internally domestic and external issues and talking about the peace deal he's working with towards russia and seeing that pressure now shift from ukraine to russia as ukraine possibly has a deal for a frame work now. we see it shift towards russia with the president saying he'll keep supplying weapons to ukraine till russia signs onto a peace deal. it's in all fronts and all

avenues from this white house. stuart: thanks, edward. occurs to me that we're going to see this live cabinet meeting live on tv. it'll then dominate the news for the rest of the day and well into tomorrow morning. that's how it begins. that's how it starts. president trump's cabinet meeting begins any moment. more varney after this. the way i approach work post fatherhood, has really trying to understand the generation that we're building devices for. here in the comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home wifi solution

for millions of families like my own. in the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. connectivity is a big part of my boys' lives. it brings people together in meaningful ways. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought

we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. our friend sold their policy to help pay their medical bills, and that got me thinking. maybe selling our policy could help with our retirement. i'm skeptical, so i did some research and called coventry direct. they explained life insurance is a valuable asset that can be sold. we learned we could sell all of our policy, or keep part of it with no future payments. who knew? we sold our policy. now we can relax and enjoy our retirement as we had planned. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance.

stuart: any moment now, full cabin meeting in thefirst second term. elon musk will be there. trump says his cabinet is happy with elon. ll, you'll see it live once it starts right here on fox business. check those markets, please. still gothe rally in progress and especially the nasdaq, which is up 1.3%, 250 points up on the nasdaq. there's been a lot of selling recently coming back little this morning. lauren looking at movers and blooming brands. lauren: outback.

down 17%. guiding lower for this quarter and their diners particularly say households with incomes of less than $100,000 are reducing how many advertisers they buy, drinks, desert ask cutting back when they do go. stuart: okay. dollar general. lauren: also lower income consumer and that consumer was strained going for 27 stores so far this year and stock down 6.5%. stuart: coming up, the big money show begins at 12 moon. co-host dagen mcdowell is here. what do you have on the show today? >> watching president trump's first cabinet meeting, stuart. david asman joining us at the top of the hour. we're going to play name that band. i will call the people we see warriors for prosperity, freedom and security. while it was like i don't know and evil goo lash of auditory

systems -- goolosh for ideologues this afternoon. stuart: never heard that one before. dagen, you're all right. see you soon. new york city's luxury real estate market just had its busiest week of sales in three years. new york city real estate broker tends to be up there with the elites and noble black joining us this morning here in new york city. welcome back. good to see you. there's a spike in luxury home sales in manhattan, tell me why. >> there's a few reasons and this was back in july and continue theed through now and july was busy leading up to the election and usually quiet and then after the election, it was crazy busy and busier now than even in the end of the fourth quarter and there's a few things that go into that and obviously the stock market in general doing well and i think people are expecting lower taxes and they're expecting lower regulation and they've kind of obstructing cerumen sashed higher rates and now it's where

they're very high. it's a lot of different reasons coming together and exponentially lighting the market on fire. >> what about the back to work and back to off mandates. is that helping? >> it's helping the rural market and helping everything and you're seeing it on fire and going to stay high. that's feeding into the cells. stuart: i have to jump in because i believe the cabinet meeting is beginning right now. let's listen in. >> thank you very much. we appreciate you being here and we've put together a great cabinet, and we've had tremendous success and give them

credit for a successful first month and make that many months and years actually. we'll have many good months and have many good years i hope, and going to solve a lot of problems and we're doing very well with russia, ukraine, president zelensky will be coming on friday. that's now confirmed, and we're going to be signing an agreement, which will be a very big agreement and i want to thank howard and scott for the job you guys did in putting it together. really did an amazing job. and that'll be on rare earth and other things and we're in for probably $350 billion and europe in for $100 billion. and that's a big difference so we're in for probably three times as much and yet it's very important to everybody but europe is very close and we have a big ocean separating us. it's very important for europe so they'll hopefully step up and

do maybe more than they're doing and maybe a lot more. the previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we've been able to make a deal to get our money back-to-back and getting a lot of money in the future and and that's appropriate because we have taxpayers that are -- shouldn't be footing the bill. shouldn't be footing the bill more than europeans and banks. it's all been worked out and we're happy about it, and i think that very importantly we'll be able to make a deal. most importantly, by far, we'll make a deal with russia and ukraine to stop killing people. they'll stop killing young russian soldiers and young ukrainian soldiers and other people in addition in the towns and cities. we'll consider that a very important thing and a big accomplishment because it was going nowhere till i spoke to putin and we'll keep you

advised. before we begin the cabinet, i'd like to have scott and couple of people say a few things but most importantly where you? this is a gentleman that's going places. heavyweights going to talk and you all know him. he'll say grace and we'll have our meeting. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. president. let's pray. father we thank you for this awesome privilege to be in your presence. god, thank you that you've allowed us to see this day at your mercies every morning and father god, we give you the glory and honor and thank you, god, for president trump, father, for appointing us, father god, thank you for anointing us to do this job. father, we pray you'll give the president, vice president wisdom, father god, as they lead and, father, i prayer for all of our colleagues here around the table and in this room. father god, we prayer that we would lead with a righteous

clarity and, father god, we serve people of the country and agency and every job we this, father, we would humble ourselves before you and we would lead in a manner that you've called us to leave and serve. father, bible says the blessing is a nation whose god is the lord. father, we today honor you and in your rightful place, father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to restore faith in this country and be a blessing to the people of america. lord god, today in our meeting we prayer you'd be glorified in our conversation. in jesus name, amen. >> amen. >> that was a very good job you did. you've done that before, haven't you? [ laughter ] >> scott turn service connected a terrific young guy and -- scott turner is a terrific young guy and going to make us all very proud. >> thank you, mr. president. >> in just over one month, illegal border cros crossings plumed but numbers that no one has seen before and much more than 100% and we have

unleashed american energy at levels that will soon be reported, but we think we'll get it going very quickly. we have incredible people on the energy front. i think we have really great people on every front. i'll let you know if they're not good, but i think they really are. we're finding every day to get the prices down, inflation is stopping slowly. part of the reason it's stopping is because of high interest rates and other problems we inherited, but we have to get the prices down, not the inflation down, the prices of eggs and various other things. eggs are a disaster. the secretary of agriculture is going to be showing you a chart that's actually mind boggling what's happened. how low they were with us and how high they are now. but i think we can do something about it, madame secretary, and you'll do a fantastic job in that position. one of the most important initiatives is doge, and we have cut billions and billions and

billions of dollars and we're looking to get it maybe to a trillion if we can do that, we're going to start getting to be at a point where we can think in terms of balancing budgets and something you haven't heard in many, many years, decades actually. it's a big -- whether it's this year or next, we'll be very close to balancing budgets and doge is very important and elon is here to give you a summary of what's happening and some of the things they've found, some of the horrible things they've found. some of the theft and fraud and we call it waste and abuse. but a lot of fraud and probably some fraud that we're not going to prove as fraud and hear the names and places where the money is going it's a disgrace. we've requested that a lot of people want to make sure the people are working so letters were sent out and everyone at this table is very much behind it, and if they aren't, i want

them to speak up and they're very much behind it. letters were sent to people to find out if the people exist. do their work, who do they work for, where are they, where have they been working? working for other companies or other entities at all and being paid by the government. so they have two jobs when they're supposed to have one. the letter asks them simple questions like what have you done lately. and if they can answer that, because i can't, i can tell you everything i've done for the last long period of time. not more than a week, and in cases we haven't gotten responses and usually that means that maybe that person doesn't exist or doesn't want to say they're working for another company while being paid by the united states government. there's a lot of interesting things that's unique and we have a very unique situation because there's a lot of people that were scamming our country. there's a lot of dishonest people and people that took

advantage of a lot of different situations and we're not going to let that happen. i'm gonna ask if it's possible to have elon get up first and talk about doge. it seems to be of great interest to everyone. i will say that there is a large group of people in this country that have such admiration for what we're doing. i got elected with tremendous vote winning every swing state, winning the popular vote, winning the counties by thousands of counties. i think it was 2,800 to 500. 2,800 to 500 counties. think of that. we have a mandate to do this and this is part of the reason i got elected and got elected based on taxes and based on many things at the border. also based on balanced budgets and getting our countries back in the shape. this is a big part of it.

getting there was tremendously successful guys and really working so hard and t businesses to run. and many ways are saying how are you doing is and sacrificing a lot and getting a lot of praise and going to get hit and we'd expect that. that's the way it works. i'd like to have elon musk please say a few words. >> thank you, mr. president. this is actually -- it's crazy as it sounds that that is almost a little description of the work the doge team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems and they're extremely old and they're running the states and systems software doesn't work and the -- so we are actually working and it's ironic but it's true.

the overall goal here with doge team is to help address the steps that we simply cannot sustain as a country, $2 trillion deficits. the interest rates -- just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the department's spending. we spend a lot under the defense department. spending over a trillion on interest. if this continues, the country will go -- become bankrupt. it's not an option not guilty thing, it's a essential thing -- optional thing, it's a essential thing. that's the reason i'm here. i'm getting a lot of death threats by the way. but if we don't do this, america will go bankrupt and that's why it has to be done. i'm confident at this point, mark my word that the -- that we can actually find trillions in savings.

at's roughly 15% of the 720 budget. obviously i can only do it with the support of everyone in this room. i'd like to thank you all for your support. thank you very much for your support. so this is very -- doge is a support function for the president and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings and to effectively find 13% in reduction in fraud and waste. is this real? go to doge.com. line item by line item and we've specified each item. we all make mistakes. we aren't perfect but when we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly. so example with usaid, one thing we accidentally cancelled very quickly was a convention and we were still at the convention and

there was no interruption. we do need to move quickly if we're going to fix this trillion dollar deficit reduction and naturally for 2026 and requires saving billions per day every day from now through the end of september. but we can't do it without you. >> any questions for elon on the subject of doge? would you have any questions and please ask me or elon? go ahead. >> just ped to ask you, president trump -- just wanted to ask you, president trump, saying today that's anybody being accountable and going for them and you've heard otherwise and if you had noted anything about members of the cabinet not happy about the way things are going and what are you doing to address those dis-faction notes. >> elon, let the cabinet speak

for just a second. [ laughter ] >> we'll through them out of here if they are. [ applause ] >> they have a lot of respect for elon that he's doing this and some disagree a little bit but i'll tell you for the most part, i think everyone is not only happy, they're thrilled so go ahead, elon. >> president trump put tether, i think, the best cabinet ever. literally so i do not give false praise this is an incredible group of people and i d't think such a talented team has actually ever been assembled and this is literally the best cabinet and i think the country should be happy with the people in this room. >> tha you. yeah. >> msident, thank yo m esidt musk.

about lf of the governme to your request foat theveded be doing ovethe past wk. is tre a te linen place for xt movesr pe being fire and when cathe erican from tt? yes.e res i thk that-mail was mis-termented as a perfmance minrpreted as performance viewt s a pre eck review. [ lauger ] you can replto the e-mail. i innot a -- anyone can accomplish this but what we are trying to get to the bottom of is particularly the number of people on payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can't respond, and some people who are not real people that are if i can tigersal individuals and some of -- i fictional people

and this is the expectation of these people. >> mr. mussening, roughly a billion employees -- jaire roughly a million employees have responded so far to this e-mail. does that mean that the remaining 1 million or so federal employees now risk being terminated, and is it your understanding and expectation posting a directive on x that the cabinet secretaries will follow that order because several agencies instructed employees that this is voluntary or not to respond. >> yeah, so i guess it was like last week the president encouraged me through truth social and to be more aggressive and i was like okay. yes, sir, mr. president. we'll do that. the president is commander in chief and i do what the

president asks. so i sent out an e-mail for when they got done and the president said yes, so i did that. you know, we got partial response. we're going to send another e-mail. our goal is not to be unfair, we want people to have a opportunity to send an e-mail. it can be what i'm working on in two sentences. that would be sufficient. this is >> and what is your target number for how many workers, employees you are looking to cut total? >> we wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential in doing the job well. if the job is not essential or they are not doing the job well, the decision will not be

on public health. >> wait, wait. i would like to add that those million people that haven't responded are on the bubble. i wouldn't say that we are thrilled about it. may be they don't exist. maybe we are paying people who don't exist. this group just got here but most people are on the bubble. maybe they are going to be gone. maybe they are not around, maybe a they are not where they are supposed to be. a lot of things have happened that i wouldn't say biden ran a tight administration, they spent money like nobody ever spent money before, wasted money, the green new scam, all the things they spend money on and we've seen that with, people can't really believe when i read them 20 millio