Elon Musk and DOGE just caved big time
This morning I wrote that Elon Musk had backed himself into a seemingly no-win corner. He sent an email to all federal government employees demanding that they each respond with bullet points about what they did last week, and that anyone who failed to respond by today would be fired. But then the Trump-appointed heads of five federal agencies reportedly instructed their employees to ignore the email. Would Musk go ahead and “fire” hundreds of thousands of employees, knowing that they could all easily defeat him in court? Or would Musk back down and reveal himself to be toothless in the process?
Now it turns out Musk is indeed caving. In an internal document obtained by a CNN reporter, Musk and his people are indeed now saying that responding to the email is a “voluntary” thing, and that no one will get fired for not having responded to it.
This makes Elon Musk look incredibly, incredibly weak. He made a huge threat, and when everyone stood up to him, he caved. This is only going to embolden others to also ignore Musk’s demands and threats going forward. Musk obviously doesn’t have as much power as he’d like to think he does. We may end up looking back at today as the day that tipped the balance of power toward the anti-Trump side of the fence. After all, Trump’s biggest henchman just revealed himself to be as toothless as Trump is.
