Donald Trump gets SpongeBob SquarePants involved following outrage over Elon Musk’s federal workers demand
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, Elon Musk, Jobs, US News
Mia Williams
Featured Image Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Nickelodeon
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, Elon Musk, Jobs, US News
Donald Trump has responded to Elon Musk's disrespectful email to federal workers with a SpongeBob meme.
If US government staff didn't feel peeved enough already, they definitely do now.
Earlier this year, the President appointed Musk to front the new Department of Government Efficiency (ironically, DOGE), which effectively is tasked with slashing federal spending.
But it seems as though too much power has gone to the tech billionaire's head.
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Just this weekend (22 February), the CEO sent out a 'disrespectful' ultimatum to federal workers at the State Department, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Veterans Affairs Department among several other departments.
All staff received a cryptic email from an account simply titled 'HR', which contained an extremely short message.
The subject line read: "What did you do last week?"
The body of the email then continued: "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."
Workers were also given a deadline to send over the information by 11.59pm on Monday.
On X, Musk added: "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Jumping on the bandwagon, Trump later posted a meme in response to Musk's demands.
The 78-year-old Republican leader posted an image of Nickelodeon's SpongeBob holding a notepad while deep in thought.
A close-up of the notepad showed that it was titled - 'Got done last week...'
On the list was: "Cried about Trump, cried about Elon, made it to the office for once, read some emails, and cried about Trump and Elon some more."
The email was not welcomed by government staff, who branded the move completely 'disrespectful'.
The brutal approach also didn't go down well with Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union.
In his statement defending workers, he said: "It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life."
In response to the bizarre email, Tibor Nagy of the State Department wrote: "No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command."
Others questioned how on Earth the CEO would have the time to read through every single email received back.
In a post on X, he responded: "This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email.
"This mess will get sorted out this week. Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will."