President Donald Trump said that at least a million federal workers are “on the bubble” because they haven’t replied to an email asking them to explain why they should keep their jobs.
During his first Cabinet meeting of this second term, Trump was asked what happened to the people who didn’t answer the email sent Saturday by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking them to list five bullet points of things they did in the last week.
Elon Musk, an adviser to Trump and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spoke at the Cabinet meeting and was asked about the emails sent.
“We’re going to send another email,” Musk said. “But our goal is not to be capricious or unfair. We want to give people every opportunity to send an email. And the email could simply be ‘What I’m working on is too sensitive or classified to describe.’ Like, literally just that would be sufficient. You know, I think this is just common sense.”
Moments later, though, Trump interjected and said the consequences could indeed be more dire for the non-respondents.
“Those million people that haven’t responded though, Elon, they are on the bubble,” Trump said. “You know, I wouldn’t say that we’re thrilled about it. You know, they haven’t responded. Now, maybe they don’t exist. Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist. Don’t forget we just got here. This group just got here. But those people are on the bubble, as they say. Maybe they’re gonna be gone.”
“I wouldn’t say that Biden ran a very tight administration,” Trump said. “They spent money like nobody’s ever spent money before. Wasted money. The green new scam, all of the different things they spent money on. And you’ve seen that. We’ve seen that with some of the things that I read in speeches. I read them, and people can’t believe when I read them. Twenty million here, 30 million here for a little educational course on something.”
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The meeting took a turn when a reporter asked Trump if any of his Cabinet members had heard complaints about Musk and what DOGE was seeking to accomplish.
Trump responded by saying, “Hey Elon, let the Cabinet speak for a second. Is anyone unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Anyone unhappy?”
The room erupted in laughter after the comment from Trump.
Musk also spoke about DOGE and what his team has been tasked to handle by the president.
“A couple tech support here, because this is actually as crazy as accounts that that that is almost a little description of the world of the those team is doing is helping fix the gonna computer systems. Menu systems are extremely old; they don’t communicate their lot of mistakes and systems. Software doesn’t work so we are actually takes whole. It’s it’s it’s ironic, but it’s true,” Musk said.
“The overall goal here with the doors to is to help address the steps that we simply cannot sustain as a coterie two trillion dollar deficit. The interest rates that just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the defense department spending. We spent a lot of us problem, but we’re spending like it over a trillion dollars on interest. If this continues, the country will go to become de facto background, but an optional thing, it is the central thing that that’s best series of here and taking a lot of and getting a lot of death threats like spectrum up. But if we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done. Competence at this point knock on wood, like of my head,” Musk joked.
“Dollars in savings. That would be a roughly 15 percent of it’s for seven trillion dollar budget and see that can only be done with the support of everyone in this room like to thank the lord for a sport. Thank you very much this. This can only be done with with your sport,” he added.
Musk continued, “To support function for the present for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings into effect, if actually find, 15 percent reduction in fraud and waste. So like was this we’ll just go to those stuck up with line. I my light on. We specify each item so. Make mistakes, we won’t be perfect, but when we make mistake, we’ll fix it very quickly.”
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Room erupts in laughter at Trump’s Cabinet meeting when he jokes about Musk:
“Hey Elon, let the Cabinet speak for a second. Is anyone unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Anyone unhappy?” pic.twitter.com/KGtTRdbXMb
— Martin Walsh (@martinwalsh__) February 26, 2025