President Donald Trump suggested he could fire up to a million government workers who didn't respond to Elon Musk's request for an email justifying their jobs.
At the first Cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration, Musk was asked what would happen to employees who didn't respond to his request.
"About half of the government employees so far appear to have responded to your request for what they've been doing over the past week," one reporter noted. "Is there a timeline in place for next moves for people being fired, and when can the American people expect to see results of that?"
Musk insisted that the request was a "pulse check" because he thought "a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can't respond."
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"And some people who are not real people, like they're literally fictional individuals that are collecting – well, somebody's collecting paychecks on a fictional individual," the world's richest man claimed.
Another reporter noted that "roughly a million employees" had not responded to Musk.
"Does that mean that the remaining one million or so federal employees now risk being terminated?" the reporter wondered.
"The president encouraged me via Twitter, social, and also via phone call to be more aggressive," Musk replied. "And I was like, OK, you know, yes, sir, Mr. President, we will indeed do that."
"If the job is not essential or they're not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the public payroll," he added.
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At that point, Trump chimed in.
"I'd like to add that those million people that haven't responded, though, Elon, they are on the bubble," the president warned. "They haven't responded. Now, maybe they don't exist. Maybe we're paying people that don't exist."
"But those people are on the bubble, as they say," he continued. "Maybe they're going to be gone. Maybe they're not around. Maybe they have other jobs. Maybe they moved, and they're not where they're supposed to be."
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