Loop her in bro
At least they tell us a joke now and then.
Trump’s top aides are struggling to contain disputes at the White House and across the administration following billionaire Elon Musk’s ultimatum to federal workers to list their accomplishments or lose their jobs, said three government officials familiar with the tensions.
Before the weekend, the White House felt confident that coordination had been improving between senior staffers and Musk, two of those people said. In the first weeks of Trump’s new administration , some White House officials had expressed concerns over the tactics of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, as Reuters previously reported.
Chief of staff Susie Wiles had pulled Musk aside to ask him to loop her in on his plans instead of surprising her team with major decisions, according to two separate sources with knowledge of the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
After that conversation, Musk had begun keeping Wiles informed of DOGE’s activities on a daily basis, said one of the officials with direct knowledge of the matter. The White House believed it had Musk’s agreement that he would seek approval from cabinet secretaries before he used the government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, to send emails directly to federal workers, two of the officials said.
But the plan appears to have quickly fallen apart. After Trump urged Musk to “get more aggressive” with DOGE in a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, OPM ordered the nation’s 2.3 million civil-service workers in an email to detail their accomplishments at work. The email landed shortly after Musk posted on his social media site X that not responding to the request would be viewed as a resignation, an ultimatum that sent shockwaves through Washington.
You have to wonder why Trump gives Musk his orders via “his Truth Social site“ rather than the more usual way, i.e. directly. You also have to wonder why Musk issues his threats to civil-service workers via his social media site.
Trump and Wiles did not sign off on the email, those three people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Musk, however, told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he had asked Trump if his team could “send out an email to everyone, just saying: ‘What did you get done last week?’ The president said yes. So, I did that.”
He did that and he also said – on his soshul meeja site – that not replying=resignation. So in effect the email was not “just saying” wudja do lassweek.
In response to questions from Reuters, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement the sources are “wrong” and that the “White House was not caught off guard.” Trump signed off on Musk’s email idea, and DOGE and the OPM gave the White House a heads up, she said.
Uh huh, but what about the non-reply=resignation part?
She called the media’s “obsession” with Trump, Musk and DOGE “pathetic” and said it proves the media is still out of touch with American voters.
I beg your pardon? It’s pathetic for the media to report what Trump, Musk and DOGE are doing? They should just ignore it and cover sports instead?
It’s Trump Derangement Syndrome Derangement Syndrome.
Yes, the media is out of touch with American voters, because too many American voters want this. But there is nothing wrong with the media attempting to report on this, and do it accurately. If the truth, if reality, is out of touch with the ‘values’ of American voters, then it is American voters who need to get their minds right, not the media. If it is a value for children to die of the measles, for old people to not get the retirement pay (which, by the way, is theirs – they’ve been paying it to the government their entire working life), for American allies to become enemies, for American enemies to become best buds, for women to be told we are nothing but “mediocre DEI hires”, for people of color ditto, for water to become unsafe, for the air to become unsafe, for the food we eat to become unsafe, then I would say there is something vastly wrong with “American values”.
And for those GC ‘feminists’ who voted for this? Yes, the trans issue is important. Was getting trans out of the bathroom important enough to destroy the country over?
Most GC feminists (no scare quotes needed) that I know of are on the liberal/progressive/left side of the political spectrum. I.e., not Trump voters. Genuine, lifelong, second-wave feminists, or at least feminists who understand the history of second-wave feminism in achieving some measure of rights and protections for women.
The right wing does this out of religiosity and because they like cruelty. They do it to “stick it to the libs.” The Trump voters that voted for that policy are not GC feminists; that’s not who GC feminists are.
That’s not to say that GC feminists don’t recognize that, on this one policy, DJT’s position is the factually correct one. There are only two sexes, and sex does matter. Even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while.
GC feminists of course recognize the existential threat to the nation, and the rest of the world, posed by authoritarian crazy people like DJT and his regime (Don’t call it an “administration.” They are not interested in “administering” anything. They only want to smash things and grab all the money for themselves). As sensible people — and as women often do when dealing with important issues — GC feminists subordinated their own interests to serve the greater good. This profoundly depraved regime is not the fault of GC feminists.
Y’know, I thought Hucka-Sanders was pretty horrible, but this brainless Fox News Hitler Youth is so much worse.