President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that he had met with his Cabinet leaders and directed them to work with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to scale back their departments in a precise fashion.

"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. We say the 'scalpel' rather than the 'hatchet,'" he posted. "The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level."

"We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one," he added. "It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people. We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done."

Trump has promised to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government, though many of the DOGE-recommended firings have faced legal scrutiny and some of its orders have faced pushback from individual departments.