Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melbert. And we begin with a story that has really striking revelations.

And it's from inside the Trump cabinet meeting. And this is something where we're going to learn a lot in the next couple of moments.

You may have heard a little bit about it, but I'm going to go through the evidence, the facts here, because it is exactly what this Trump White House and a lot of what Elon Musk is up to,

it paints a picture of it in a way that's different from what we've heard in public,

from all of the usual PR and the political press conferences and the efforts to tell a certain

story. We're now going to go tonight together behind the scenes. This is reporting that shows what many

would call a dysfunctional White House, and you'll see why. People at war with themselves and

each other over the efforts to basically dismantle large parts of the federal government by someone

who doesn't run the federal government, wasn't elected to the position, Elon Musk, and clashing with the very people who, of course,

the president also picked to be in charge of these departments. And we often draw on different

reporting around here. You know that from watching the news, right? We mention different stories.

This is, from the New York Times, credit to their reporters, their journalists getting this

story out,

and it is a bombshell. The Times reports that Musk basically ended up in a clash, a conflict

with much of the cabinet, and that was Thursday this week, and laced into these other officials,

some of whom are important, right? If you're picked to run the State

Department, you are pretty important official within the government. And just to put it clearly,

we are talking right now about an unelected billionaire sitting in on these important meetings

and going at people in very intense terms.

And the substance matters, as well as, quite frankly, the emotion and the gossip of this,

because it's all part of how this government is being run.

Musk going at Secretary of State Rubio, according to New York Times,

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