Does Trump’s Cabinet hate Elon Musk? The DOGE king’s federal employee chain saw seems to be rankling them.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Is anyone unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw them out of here.” —Donald Trump, to his Cabinet

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet secretaries, some of them still unconfirmed, for the first meeting of his new term. They sat around a table, with Trump in the middle, while one notable attendee, neither volunteer nor full federal employee, and certainly not a member of the Cabinet, stood in the corner: Elon Musk.

Looking like Rasputin, Musk loomed over the proceedings, standing cross-armed in a black MAGA hat, T-shirt, and blazer. When a question came from the press pool asking Musk how he was addressing reported dissatisfaction among actual members of the Trump Cabinet, Trump swooped in to address the issue.

Although the question had clearly been put to Musk, Trump talked right over him, saying “Elon, let the Cabinet speak just for a second.”

For those who thought Trump would never be willing to share the spotlight with Musk, the two have remained surprisingly harmonious through the administration’s first weeks.

But it sure appears as if the Musk countdown is on: For one thing, as a “special government employee,” Musk is technically allowed to work for the government for only 130 days.

Meanwhile, Trump has already felt the need to clarify, repeatedly, that he is actually totally fine with Musk, thanks for asking. “ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON,” he posted on Truth Social before the Wednesday meeting.

Trump then put it theatrically to the Cabinet, asking if anyone was unhappy. “If you are, we’ll throw them out of here,” he said, as a round of applause overtook the awkward laughter. (Trump’s exact wording is a little muffled by the laughs—it’s not totally clear if he says we’ll throw them or him out of here. The official pool transcript says them; the audio sounds more like him. But the message, of possible purge over rising displeasure, was clear enough. In essence, everyone was put on watch.) Musk also clapped, for himself.

But Trump needn’t have looked far for malcontents. Seated directly to his right was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been subjected to all orders of indignity by Musk’s Gen Z jackboots. Rubio smiled into the middle distance—his was not an enthusiastic response. If Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has a signature move so far, beyond random terminations of employees and contracts, it’s misrepresenting what it’s doing. That has made for a calamitous and embarrassing muddle at Rubio’s State Department in particular.

Rubio has sworn that funding for critical programs like PEPFAR—the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—would continue to receive funding, going all the way to the White House to get assurances of that fact. But, according to the Washington Post, “each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, [DOGE employees] Farritor and Kliger would veto the payments.” Musk has hobbled Rubio’s ability to perform even basic acts at his own department, and made him look like a doofus in the process.

A similar saga played out with Ebola prevention. Musk claimed on Wednesday it had been accidentally canceled and quickly restored. Yet current and former U.S. Agency for International Development officials told the Post that the funding had indeed been cut and not restored. Rubio has declared himself the acting leader of the gutted USAID.

But it’s not just him. On Saturday, Musk sent an email to more than a million federal staffers, demanding to know what five things they had done the previous week and threatening that anyone who did not respond would be fired. At least one Cabinet-level official, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—along with FBI Director Kash Patel (not technically a Cabinet-level post)—promptly told her staff to ignore the request and asserted that she alone was in charge of her department’s employee reviews. More than half the other secretaries soon followed suit. The response from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services was particularly sharp. According to the New York Times, all HHS employees received a follow-up stating that “there is no H.H.S. expectation that H.H.S. employees respond to O.P.M., and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,” adding that anyone who did respond should “assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly.” Eventually, the White House said the agencies could just ignore Musk’s demand. But then, at the Cabinet meeting, Musk said that “we’re going to send another email,” no doubt to the chagrin of those seated.

They’re not exactly chanting his name. Meanwhile, a bunch of Republican senators put out eerily similar posts on X in support of Musk all at once after a meeting Thursday.

While Musk has made a fool of some of Trump’s Cabinet members and had his directives undermined by others, he’s also made a nightmare of things for congressional Republicans, who, from Oregon to Georgia, are facing furious responses from constituents over DOGE’s cuts. Rep. Rich McCormick, from a deep-red Georgia district, said he planned to push Trump and Musk to ease up after he was confronted at a town hall.

Naturally, the opposite has happened. Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting was by and large an announcement of Phase 2, a turbocharging of cuts, despite the general public outrage and the sort of startling lack of fraud or wasteful spending identified by Musk. The furthest-reaching wave of firings yet is expected imminently, targeting everything from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Labor to the less prominent three-letter bureaucracies that make the government run.

That Trump even felt the need to address concerns about Musk shows that there are cracks in the facade. Likely, numerous members of his Cabinet feel the same way about Musk as the American public does: They hate him. According to recent polling, just 34 percent of net respondents said they approved of how Musk was handling his job.

While Trump may be content to let Musk continue to embarrass his appointees and Congress members, the question now is how long he will let the billionaire drag down his own approval rating. His number, too, is sinking steadily.

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.