President Trump has shared his thoughts on Elon Musk's "ultimatum" email issued to federal workers.
Over the weekend, the tech billionaire - who is also a self-proclaimed free speech warrior and now one of Trump's closest aides - ordered for an email to US federal workers demanding a weekly progress report.
The email came about after President Trump told Musk to be "more aggressive" in a Truth Social post.
"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager," the email read, adding that employees shouldn’t include classified information and had until Monday, February 24, at 11:59PM EST to respond.
Understandably, many federal employees were baffled by the sudden late-night directive as the 53-year-old isn’t a government official, which begs the question: Does he actually have the power to fire anyone?
Apparently not, as several department heads, including the directors of the FBI and National Intelligence, told employees to ignore the request.
So, where does the President of the United States stand on all of this? Well, according to the man himself, he’s all in.
During a meeting with the French President Emmanuel Macron at the Oval Office, the 78-year-old told reporters that any federal worker who ignored Musk’s email would be fired - (or as he oddly put it, “semi-fired").
"What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’" Trump said, cited by AP. "And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist."
With the original deadline now passed, Musk isn’t backing down. Instead, he’s extended the cut-off and fired off a fresh warning.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the Tesla and SpaceX CEO retweeted messages supporting his email and vented his frustration at the lack of compliance.
"The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send," he wrote in one post. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers."
"Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?" he continued. "Makes old Twitter look good. Didn’t think that was possible."
And if that wasn’t enough, Musk made it clear that subject to the president's discretion, employees now have one more chance to reply.
"Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," he wrote in another post on the social media platform.