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Maddow-Blog-Trump picks the wrong fight, smears federal employees who 'don't work at all'
If the president wants to spark a debate about firing federal employees who don’t work enough, is there room for a conversation about his own schedule?
If Trump really wants to have a conversation about firing federal employees whom he sees as lazy, can we talk about Mr. Executive Time and the frequency of his golf outings? www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-03-13T17:27:26.778Z
Link to tweet
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-picks-wrong-fight-smears-federal-employees-dont-work-rcna196258
As the White House continues to dismantle a variety of federal departments and agencies, laying off thousands of federal employees, Donald Trump was asked for his feeling about the many civil servants whose careers he has derailed. NBC News reported:
He appeared to be rather serious about this, as if he’d completed a detailed review of personnel records and could say with certainty that countless federal workers were receiving paychecks despite doing no work.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lk72et67mm2j
The timing could’ve been better: Right around the time the president made the unscripted comments, Politico reported that a television has been installed in Elon Musk’s White House office so he can “play video games” at work......
I suppose there’s a reason he hasn’t repeated the “I’d want to stay in the White House and work my ass off” line since the 2016 race.
But even inside the White House, Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation as a workhorse. Axios published an interesting scoop in early 2019, highlighting the president’s private workday schedule from the previous three months. It showed that Trump spent around 60% of his scheduled time in unstructured “executive time.”
As we discussed soon after, “executive time” was a euphemism the White House came up with to describe Trump’s many hours of downtime, leaving the president to do as he pleases, including watching an inordinate amount of television.
If the president wants to spark a debate about firing federal employees who don’t put in enough hours of actual work, I’m all for it. We can start with the most powerful federal employee of them all.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he feels “very badly” for the thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs in recent weeks but that “many of them don’t work at all.” Asked by NBC News whether he feels responsible for so many people losing their jobs, Trump said: “Sure I do. I feel very badly ... but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”
He appeared to be rather serious about this, as if he’d completed a detailed review of personnel records and could say with certainty that countless federal workers were receiving paychecks despite doing no work.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lk72et67mm2j
Link to tweet
The timing could’ve been better: Right around the time the president made the unscripted comments, Politico reported that a television has been installed in Elon Musk’s White House office so he can “play video games” at work......
I suppose there’s a reason he hasn’t repeated the “I’d want to stay in the White House and work my ass off” line since the 2016 race.
But even inside the White House, Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation as a workhorse. Axios published an interesting scoop in early 2019, highlighting the president’s private workday schedule from the previous three months. It showed that Trump spent around 60% of his scheduled time in unstructured “executive time.”
As we discussed soon after, “executive time” was a euphemism the White House came up with to describe Trump’s many hours of downtime, leaving the president to do as he pleases, including watching an inordinate amount of television.
If the president wants to spark a debate about firing federal employees who don’t put in enough hours of actual work, I’m all for it. We can start with the most powerful federal employee of them all.
1 replies
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