WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he expected efforts to slash the size of the federal government’s workforce would bring it down to an appropriate level in the next two to three months as he met with billionaire adviser Elon Musk and Cabinet officials on Monday.

“We’re getting down to a point we think probably over the next two or three months, we’ll be pretty much satisfied with the people that are working hard and want to be members of the administration and our country,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday.

“Our country was riddled with fat,” Trump added, “and we’re getting rid of the fat.”

Musk is spearheading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency effort aimed at dramatically shrinking the federal government’s workforce and functions. While Trump and Musk have presented a united front, the DOGE initiative has rattled even some of the president’s allies worried about the scope of its cuts, potential legal and political challenges, and the impact on services that are popular with voters.

Trump’s comments make clear that his administration aims to push ahead with those cuts, but also appeared to suggest that there may be an end goal in mind for the reductions. Trump has also sought to balance his push to find savings with his pledges not to touch certain entitlement programs.

“It’s not necessarily a very popular thing to do,” Trump said Monday, appearing to acknowledge some of the concerns about the government overhaul. “I have no idea how it plays out in the public.”

Still, Trump and Musk defended the effort, which they have cast as rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government. Many of those working on the DOGE initiative are young, lack prior government experience and have had ties to Musk’s companies or other Silicon Valley firms, raising concerns about their access to federal data.

Musk sidestepped a question about the scope of cuts to the government and instead used the opportunity to thank members of his team who he said had been unfairly targeted for their work.

“Thanks to all the DOGE team that are getting death threats on a daily basis, just trying to do the right thing for the American taxpayer and for the American people,” Musk said.

Musk is juggling his DOGE role alongside those of his companies, including Tesla Inc., which has seen shares fall sharply since highs and the company targeted in a string of vandalism cases. Trump earlier this month said he would buy a Tesla vehicle, holding a White House event at which Musk presented the president with a range of models in what was a showcase for the company.

Democrats have cast the DOGE effort as disorganized, inaccurate about many of its claims and disruptive to core government services. They have also raised questions about potential conflicts of interest for Musk, the world’s richest person, whose varied business interests boast billions in federal contracts.

Trump has sought to ease strains over the cuts by saying that cabinet secretaries, not DOGE, will take the lead in making personnel reductions and urging them to wield a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” to quell blowback. Those tensions were apparent during an earlier cabinet meeting where the New York Times reported that Musk criticized U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the pace of staff reductions at his department.

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