AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour."

At the White House today, President Donald Trump convened the very first Cabinet meeting of his second administration.

GEOFF BENNETT: In an hour-plus Q&A with reporters, Mr. Trump did most of the talking, and there was one figure there who didn't have a physical seat at the table, but whose influence was undeniable.

Lisa Desjardins starts our coverage.

LISA DESJARDINS: At the table, some two dozen members of President Trump's Cabinet meeting for the first time.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: OK, thank you very much.

We appreciate you being here.

LISA DESJARDINS: And on the side, a special government employee whose work impacts them all, billionaire Elon Musk.

DONALD TRUMP: So I'm going to ask, if it's possible, to have Elon get up first and talk about DOGE.

LISA DESJARDINS: Musk was effusive about Trump.

ELON MUSK, Department of Government Efficiency: And President Trump has put together, I think, the best Cabinet ever.

LISA DESJARDINS: And pointed about government employees, defending e-mail directing them to list their actions on the job.

ELON MUSK: I think that e-mail perhaps was misinterpreted as a performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review.

Do you have a pulse?

(LAUGHTER) ELON MUSK: Do you have a pulse and two neurons?

ELON MUSK: So, if you have a pulse at two neurons, you can reply to an e-mail.

LISA DESJARDINS: In a chaotic rollout, some agencies told workers not to respond.

But even so, Trump gave this warning: DONALD TRUMP: I would like to add that those million people that haven't responded though, Elon, they are on the bubble.

I wouldn't say that we're thrilled about it.

They haven't responded.

LISA DESJARDINS: This as a new memo indicates the Trump administration is getting ready to greatly rev up layoffs.

It directs federal agencies to develop large-scale reductions in force by mid-March.

Trump turned to Lee Zeldin, who runs the Environmental Protection Agency, and put the scope into perspective.

DONALD TRUMP: He thinks he's going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from Environmental, and we're going to speed up the process too at the same time.

LISA DESJARDINS: As he slices government, Trump, who ran on fighting inflation, addressed a spike.

DONALD TRUMP: We have to get the prices down, not the inflation down, the prices of eggs and various other things.

Eggs are a disaster.

The secretary of agriculture is going to be showing you a chart that's actually mind-boggling, what's happened, how low they were with us and how high they are now.

But I think we can do something about it.

LISA DESJARDINS: From there, a grab bag of questions from reporters.

QUESTION: Mr. President, part of your mission -- sir.

LISA DESJARDINS: Asked about immigration policy, Trump pitched his so-called gold card idea.

DONALD TRUMP: It's sort of a green card-plus.

LISA DESJARDINS: A path to citizenship with a $5 million investment price tag per person.

It would replace the current EB-5 immigrant investor visa.

DONALD TRUMP: If we sell a million, right, a million, that's $5 trillion, $5 trillion.

LISA DESJARDINS: The current program sees 100 times fewer visas than that per year, and this offer to sell a million potential citizenships comes as Trump has virtually shut down other legal paths, including asylum, as broken and corrupt.

On Ukraine, Trump said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is headed to Washington this Friday to sign an agreement over Ukraine's natural resources.

And, on the war, he pushed the idea of tough concessions for the country.

DONALD TRUMP: NATO, you can forget about.

LISA DESJARDINS: But said a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow is still on the table, while Trump also said he thinks Putin's goal is to take over Ukraine.

DONALD TRUMP: He had no intention, in my opinion, of settling this war.

I think he wanted the whole thing.

LISA DESJARDINS: Another hot topic, House Republicans' sweeping budget outline passed last night on a dramatic vote by the thinnest of margins.

Trump said the $2 million in cuts won't affect Medicaid or Social Security, with a caveat.

DONALD TRUMP: We're not going to touch it.

Now, we are going to look for fraud.

LISA DESJARDINS: Trump has set up his Cabinet relatively quickly, with just three members out of two dozen left to confirm.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Lisa Desjardins.