Trump Has Harsh Response to Federal Workers Losing Jobs
The president, who has played golf on 13 of his first 48 days back in office, claimed civil servants haven’t been showing up to work.
President Donald Trump made it clear that he has little remorse about workers losing their jobs in his chaotic government overhaul.
A reporter asked the president what responsibility he felt for the civil servants who had lost their jobs during Wednesday’s Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
“I feel very badly, but many of them don’t work at all,” Trump replied just one day after cutting nearly half of the Education Department’s staff.
”Many of them never showed up to work. Many of them, many of them never showed up to work," he repeated.
The president insisted that the job cuts are targeted at “the people that aren’t working or are not doing a good job,” a message echoed by the department’s Secretary, Linda McMahon.
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“What we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat,” she said after announcing the staff cuts.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the staff cuts eliminate “bureaucratic bloat.”
Noam Galai/Getty Images
Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have fired tens of thousands of federal employees in their crusade to reduce the size of the government and weed out “waste.”
The world’s richest man has repeatedly suggested that federal workers are not working hard enough, even though The Washington Post found that federal workers usually work an average of 43 hours a week, the most of any class of worker.
But by Musk’s standards, the president hasn’t exactly been showing up to work either. He has played golf on 13 of his first 48 days back in office, flying down to South Florida to golf for five days straight at the height of DOGE’s firing spree in February.
Donald Trump golfs at the Trump National Golf Club in August 2023.
Mike Stobe/Getty Images
The cost of transporting the president and his extensive security for these trips adds up, with each Florida golf excursion exceeding $3 million, according to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report.
Taxpayers have already paid $18.2 million for him to hit the links during his second term, and Trump is well on his way to surpass the $151.5 million spent on such trips during his first term.
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