Donald Trump backs Elon Musk email threatening to fire government employees if they don’t respond

The furore over Elon Musk's productivity email debacle rumbles on as Donald Trump now appears to have given his backing to dismiss any federal worker who doesn't respond.

In case you missed it, here's a recap: Over the weekend, presidential 'first buddy' and head of the DOGE department Elon Musk emailed US federal employees requesting a bullet point list of five things they accomplished in the last week.

"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 send any classified information and reply by Monday (24 February) 11:59pm EST.

Otherwise, they may find their jobs meeting the business end of Musk's new bureaucracy chainsaw.

Elon Musk has made no secret of his DOGE ambitions (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Understandably, the federal employees of the US were a little confused by the late night email and whether or not they would be required to reply, given the fact that Musk isn't officially a government employee and his hiring/firing powers therefore 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 you may be wondering where does the US President stand on all of this? And does Musk actually have the backing to threaten to fire people?

Well it would seem the 78-year-old leader is fully onboard with the idea, telling reporters that anyone who doesn't answer will be fired, or 'semi-fired' - whatever that means.

"What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working," Trump said during a meeting with the French President (via 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."

The deadline has been and gone for the productivity email, prompting Musk to extend the cut-off and reissue his warning about termination.

For some reason, the President of France was even present to hear the update (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Taking to X, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO retweeted a string of messages in support of his productivity email and seemed to be rather irked that employees hadn't followed his request.

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

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

"Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," he added.