Billionaire Elon Musk attended US President Donald Trump's first cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, amid widespread criticism of his sweeping government cuts. Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to cut costs by downsizing the federal government and slashing spending, told the Cabinet that he has been getting "a lot of death threats" for the work he was doing.

His remarks came when Trump asked him to stand up and explain how the DOGE was working and how much they were cutting.

"It's an honour to have you. He's been a tremendously successful guy. He's really working so hard. And he's got businesses to run. And in many ways, they say, "How do you do this?" And, you know, he's sacrificing a lot and - getting a lot of praise, I'll tell you, but he's also getting hit.  And we would expect that, and that's the way it works," Trump said.

Musk, who was wearing his usual black "Make America Great Again" baseball cap, then stood up and said he calls himself a "humble tech support". 

"Because this is actually - as crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that the DOGE team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems. Many of these systems are extremely old. They don't communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. The software doesn't work.  So, we are actually tech support.  It's ironic, but it's true," he said.