Washington:

According to The New York Times, Musk argued with Rubio and separately with transportation secretary Sean Duffy during a cabinet meeting chaired by Trump on Thursday. US President Donald Trump denied on Friday a report that his senior advisor, billionaire Elon Musk, had clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a White House meeting.

Musk is leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a drive to slash costs and cut jobs across government departments, reportedly leading to tensions with department heads.

After the meeting, Trump announced that cuts would continue but with a "scalpel" rather than a "hatchet", implying that he had taken the opportunity to rein Musk in. But, asked by reporters on Friday about the reported dispute, the president dismissed it, declaring: "No clash. I was there."

Rubio countered that 1,500 State Department officials had accepted early retirement, and sarcastically asked whether he should hire them back just to sack them again more spectacularly.

He went on to insist that Musk and Rubio "they're both doing a fantastic job ... they both get along fantastically well." According to the Times report Musk scorned Rubio's cost-cutting record at the State Department, accusing him of having fired "nobody" in the administration's first 45 days.

In another exchange, Duffy accused DOGE of having tried to sack vital air traffic controllers right as he deals with the aftermath of several plane crashes, prompting Musk to accuse him of a "lie", again according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly intervened to halt the argument and suggest that henceforth the controllers be hired from the "geniuses" studying at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since coming to office, Trump's administration has sacked or announced the departure of tens of thousands of federal employees in a scorched-earth efficiency drive. Several US media have reported friction between Musk and senior officials, who accuse his young crew of DOGE officials -- recruited from Silicon Valley -- of exceeding their authority.

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