- Trump says he’d like to see Elon Musk “get more aggressive.”
- Musk is the face of DOGE, which has upended Washington with its budget cuts and layoffs.
- Musk responded to Trump’s comment a few hours later.
As far as President Donald Trump is concerned, Elon Musk’s DOGE isn’t cutting enough.
On Saturday, Trump praised Musk’s efforts to streamline government operations and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy and then called on his ally to do even more.
“Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive,” Trump wrote in all caps on his social media platform, TruthSocial.
A few hours later, Musk responded on his social media platform, X.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump called Musk a “patriot” for his government work.
In just over a month in office, Trump and the White House DOGE office have pushed through buyout offers and laid off swaths of staffers at the US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and elsewhere.
DOGE on Thursday said it had already saved taxpayers $55 billion, mostly through canceled contracts, though it has made some mistakes in its accounting, like reporting a contract was worth billions when it was actually worth millions.
Musk says his ultimate goal is to cut at least $1 trillion — or a “best-case outcome” of $2 trillion — from the federal budget.
“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, a vocal supporter of Trump’s economic policies, also said during a CNN interview on Thursday that Musk should go even further in his efforts.
“I don’t think he’s cutting enough,” O’Leary said. “When you find a broken company, whatever you think you should cut, you add 20 percent more to it. Then you see how the organization adjusts, and you can always hire back.”
“There’s always going to be an opportunity to criticize some cut that was too deep or the wrong person got cut,” he continued. “But my point is, as long as you keep the mandate in place, keep cutting, keep hacking, keep slashing. This is good for government.”
Musk’s move-fast and break-things effort to disrupt and reinvent the federal government is having a significant real-world impact across the country.
In addition to the thousands who have left their jobs and are now unemployed, many farmers and organizations that rely on federal funding are seeking clarification on whether invoices for completed work will be paid.
Legal challenges to Trump’s slew of executive actions have added to the uncertainty federal workers now face.
