Donald Trump gave his co-President Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency carte blanche to go on a federal employee firing spree—and now Musk is lamely begging for workers to come back.
In a post on X on Thursday, Musk tried to unretire air traffic controllers via tweet, as if he and Trump didn’t gut the department as part of DOGE’s chaotic and unwieldy firings.
“There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so,” Musk wrote.
Musk and Trump’s dizzying decisions and flippant attitudes are sure to spike anxiety for U.S. air passengers as plane crashes and near-misses continue to make headlines.
This mess can be traced back to the very day Trump took office, when Musk forced the Federal Aviation Administration chief to resign.
After an American Airlines jet collided with a military helicopter and killed 67 people on Jan. 29, Trump shirked responsibility and blamed it on DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In reality, Trump gutted the aviation safety committee that had been in place for three decades just days before the crash.
In February, Musk and Trump fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration workers—the experts tasked with keeping the skies safe for nearly 3 million air passengers per day. Since then, numerous plane crashes have happened or been narrowly avoided by pilots across the country.
But Trump and his minions remain fixated on “saving” money—seemingly at any cost.
“One of the most important initiatives is DOGE, and we have cut billions and billions and billions of dollars. We're looking to get it maybe to $1 trillion,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Is it lost on Trump that Musk and his DOGE dorks have already squandered millions spent on recruiting and training by firing new, probationary federal employees? Or that much of these “savings” are a mirage, while Musk’s companies keep landing extremely lucrative government contracts?
As if plane safety isn’t crucial enough, the White House is also making nuclear proliferation easier.
Earlier this month, Musk went on a firing and rehiring spree at the National Nuclear Security Administration—you know, the agency tasked with overseeing our nuclear arsenal. According to NBC News, when the White House scrambled to reinstate the fired employees, officials had no good way to contact them or inform them that they’d be rehired.
When they aren’t making the world more dangerous by firing and rehiring federal employees in the FAA and NNSA, Trump and his inefficient Cabinet are doing damage on the ground.
Illnesses like bird flu, measles, COVID-19, and even Ebola are at risk of spreading after the health experts responsible for figuring out how to mitigate them were let go.
"I should say also, we will make mistakes. We won't be perfect," the unelected Musk said on Wednesday during Trump’s first Cabinet meeting while talking about DOGE. "But when we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention … So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption."
Doesn’t that make you feel super safe?
During the meeting, the White House announced a $1 billion, five-pronged investment to deploy epidemiologists and develop a bird flu vaccine in the face of skyrocketing egg prices.
“American farmers need relief, and American consumers need affordable food,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a press release announcing the initiative. “To every family struggling to buy eggs: We hear you, we’re fighting for you, and help is on the way.”
If by “help” she means continuing to fire the people in charge of doing so, then sure.
“We have to get the prices down, not the inflation down. The prices of eggs and various other things, eggs are a disaster,” Trump said.
Trump and Musk are right about one thing: All of this is a disaster—their disaster.
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