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‘Cried About Trump, Cried About Elon’: Trump Taunts Federal Workers With ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Meme

Trump posted the meme a day after his lieutenant Elon Musk threatened to fire federal employees who fail to respond to a demand to list their recent accomplishments.

President Donald Trump shared a SpongeBob Squarepants meme mocking federal workers for allegedly subpar productivity and taking issue with his administration’s Elon Musk-led efforts to lay off tens of thousands of people within their ranks. The image, posted to the president’s Truth Social account, contains an edited screenshot from an episode of the popular children’s cartoon, depicting the titular yellow character pondering a list of things that another character “Got Done Last Week.” The meme—which originated from a conservative account on X—directly references an email the Office of Personnel Management sent to employees across federal departments and agencies demanding they provide a list of five accomplishments from the previous week by midday Monday. The email appears to have been sent at the behest of Musk, an adviser to Trump who leads the federal spending task force DOGE, which threatened federal workers who fail to reply with termination. The leaders of several agencies, including FBI Director and Trump ally Kash Patel, have told their staff not to respond. Among the list of things on SpongeBob’s list in the meme shared by Trump are “cried about Trump,” “cried about Elon,” “made it into the office for once,” and “read some emails.” A judge rejected a request by labor unions to halt the Trump administration’s mass firings last week.

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Sean Craig

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