CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter said although Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees list things they accomplished at work last week “sounds like common sense” to Americans, it is actually “nonsense.”
Stelter commented on Musk, who works with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), sending out emails on Saturday to federal employees requiring them to list what they did the prior week at their job. Employees have until 11:59 pm on Monday to send the list of accomplishments or lose their employment, according to emails regarding Musk’s directive that were sent by the Office of Personnel Management.
“The starting point here is it makes a lot of sense, in theory, to go and ask all the employees what they‘re doing,” Stelter said on “Inside Politics” Monday.
CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter responded to Elon Musk demanding federal employees list their accomplishments during a segment on “Inside Politics.” (CNN screenshot)
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Stelter added that Musk asked the same question to former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in the months leading up to purchasing the company in 2022. After Musk officially bought the social media platform, he went on to fire Agrawal as well as CFO Ned Segal and general counsel Vijaya Gadde. Roughly 70% to 80% of Twitter’s 8,000 employees were also later fired or left the company.
Stelter said the situation with the federal government is far more complicated, although it may seem simple to most Americans.
“And I think we should recognize to a lot of Americans, this makes perfect sense, right? Tell us what you did last week. What are your accomplishments? Lots of people are used to doing that in their jobs,” Stelter said. “Of course, it gets really complicated really quickly with classified information or if you‘re not checking your work email over the weekend. So I understand it‘s not the common sense that he claims it is, but I think we should understand why this appeals to people… right? It‘s actually nonsense, but it sounds like common sense.”
Musk similarly asked former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal what he accomplished at work before purchasing the platform in 2022. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto, CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images (Photo illustration))
Musk doubled down, saying the initiative is important due to an alleged swath of government employees who accomplish such little work that they are not even checking their government email accounts.
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“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all! In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud,” Musk posted to X on Sunday.
Musk’s emails stated that employees have until Monday night to respond. (Getty Images)
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Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.
