Donald Trump supports Elon Musk’s email threatening to fire government staff if they don’t reply

The President backs his controversial ultimatum

Musk, head of the DOGE department, emailed US federal employees over the weekend requesting a bullet point list of five things they accomplished in the last week.

The email read: "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."

He added that employees shouldn't send any classified information and reply by Monday (24 February) 11:59pm EST otherwise, they may find themselves looking for a new job.

The federal employees were left confused given that Musk isn't officially a government employee and his hiring/firing powers are unclear.

The situation was further complicated when several department heads, such as the directors of the FBI and National Intelligence, informed their employees to ignore the HR request.

Now, the President has backed the businessman, telling reporters that anyone who doesn't answer will be fired, or 'semi-fired'.

The deadline has been and gone for the productivity email but Musk has now extended the cut-off and has reissued his warning about termination.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO took to X to share a string of messages in support of his productivity email and seemed to be rather irked that employees hadn't followed his request.

He said: "The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send.

"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?"

Musk added that 'subject to the discretion of the President' employees have been given another chance to reply.

He said: "Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."