‘They would have been fired had they not resigned,’ Elon Musk said.
Trump adviser Elon Musk and the White House have criticized media reports about 21 civil service employees resigning from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Feb. 25.
DOGE, created by Trump by renaming the existing United States Digital Service (USDS), is tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal operations. Reducing staff numbers and limiting hiring are also part of the targeted cost-cutting efforts.
Musk, who leads DOGE, responded to a report on the letter in a post on social media platform X, calling it “fake news” and “propaganda.”
“These were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office,” the businessman wrote. “They would have been fired had they not resigned.”
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was dismissive of the mass resignation.
“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,“ Leavitt said. ”President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.”
In a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained and reported on Feb. 25 by The Associated Press, the 21 staffers said they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” they wrote. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, Harrison Fields, the White House principal deputy press secretary, said it was an example of inaccurate reporting.
“Democrats and the mainstream media have once again gone off the deep end with their breathlessly inaccurate reporting on President Trump’s widely popular mission to rid the federal government of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Fields said.
“DOGE has effectively become part of the USDS as a component of the White House, and any leftover career bureaucrats who don’t align with the President or DOGE are neither advised nor welcomed to be a part of this never-before-seen mission to make the government more efficient.”
Musk and DOGE have been hit with multiple lawsuits seeking to stymie its operations.
Musk also recently drew criticism after the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to government workers over the weekend asking them to provide a bullet-point list of their accomplishments, with Musk commenting on social media that those who do not respond will face termination.
There is no official tally for the total firings and layoffs to date, but a review of various reports suggests that it is at least 20,000 people, with an additional 75,000 people accepting deferred resignations, bringing the total affected to nearly 100,000.
The Associated Press and Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.