You’d think the MAGA, with all its bravado about “saving America,” might at least figure out how to save itself from its own incompetence.
These are the folks who think according to Zachary Levi only the Trump-ing ones deserve to keep their jobs.)
Musk, armed with a seemingly limitless ego, has been handed the keys to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And boy, is he making a mess of it. His latest stunt involves sending an email to hundreds of thousands of federal employees demanding they report what they accomplished last week. Oh, and the unelected billionaire warned that failure to respond would be treated as a resignation.
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
Musk seems to think that managing the federal workforce is the same as slashing Twitter’s staff or firing engineers at Tesla. But here’s the thing: Government doesn’t work like a Silicon Valley startup, and Musk’s attempts to act like it does are already blowing up in his face.
However, Trump is loving every minute of Musk’s chaotic campaign. Never one to shy away from over-the-top theatrics, the president took to Truth Social to tell Musk to “get more aggressive.”
Musk responded with a quick, “Will do, Mr. President,” on social media. And just like that, panic spread across federal agencies as employees scrambled to figure out what Musk’s email even meant. Surprisingly, Trump’s newly minted FBI director and a longtime MAGA loyalist, Kash Patel, wasn’t on board with Musk’s plan. In an email to FBI employees, he essentially told them to ignore Musk’s directive because the FBI would handle its own reviews, thank you very much.
Patel wasn’t alone in his defiance. Multiple federal agencies, including the CDC, FEMA, the IRS, and NOAA, also told their employees not to respond to Musk’s productivity questionnaire. The Department of Defense even advised its civilian employees to wait for legal counsel before taking any action. Tibor Nagy, the acting Under Secretary of State for Management, sent a memo to State Department staff saying, “No employee is obligated to report their activities outside their Department chain of command.”
This whole debacle is a perfect example of what happens when you mix unchecked egos, private-sector arrogance, and political populism. Trump’s decision to hand Musk so much power is a gamble at best and a disaster at worst. Musk might be brilliant in his own domain, but the government isn’t a business. Patel’s pushback, meanwhile, highlights the cracks forming within Trump’s istration. The MAGA movement has always been a coalition of strong personalities with competing agendas, and this is just the latest example of those tensions coming to the surface.
Published: Feb 23, 2025 02:13 pm