Can Elon Do This?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We got a few minutes here with John Decker, twenty
four to seven News White House correspondent on the latest
on in those efforts. Then mostly John on the pushback.
A lot of unions are saying, on Elon Musky, you
can't do this right.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Right, And that was a lawsuit filed by the unions
representing the two million federal workers yesterday, so that may
indeed be resolved by the federal courts. But there's a
lot of confusion, Gary, and the reason being is because
Elon Musk sends out this email over the weekend, then
the Office of Personnel Management, which reports directly to President Trump,

(00:34):
sends out another email saying to those federal workers, ignore
the Musk email, do not reply to it. And then
last night Musk sending out another email saying if you
don't reply to this email, you risk being terminated. So
lots of confusion. Obviously, that creates a lot of anxiety
for any federal worker receiving these kinds of emails, and

(00:55):
I don't think there's clarity in terms of what this
all means for them. When you have different federal departments
and agencies saying different things to their employees, and there's
no uniform response that's been given.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, what does a worker be supposed to do if
his boss says don't reply to this you know? I mean, yeah,
does Musk the email have the force of authority of
the president.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, that's the big question. I think that's the reason
why I think the federal courts will have to resolve this.
If you have a department head, let's just say, the
Department of Health and Human Services saying do not reply
to this email because malign actors may get access to
this email. And then you have Elon Musk saying if
you don't reply to this email, you're going to get

(01:44):
a pink slip. You're confused as a federal worker and
you don't know what to do, and obviously you don't
want to lose your job. So that needs to be clarified.
Hopefully there'll be some more clarity today coming from the
President or the administration in terms of which email to
reply to if you are a federal worker.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, you know, it's pretty common in private business for
an employer. If an employer wants to fire someone and
they don't want to go through all of the EOE
and the HR stuff. If it's if it's the reason
for the layoff is we're downsizing or cutting back costs.

(02:25):
They can do that. Well, that's what this is, you know.
I mean the union thing would be you can't you
can't fire us without cause. Well, I think you can
if it's if it's a cost cutting measure and you're not.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, the union thing really has to do with the
point that you just raised. Gary, who has the authority
you know, is it the department headed, the Department of
HHS or ETA or whatever federal department agency you're talking about,
or Elon Musk, who is essentially a glorified consultant. I
think that needs to be resolved by by the president,

(03:01):
needs to be resolved by the federal courts. You know,
there's no question that reducing the size of government is
a noble cause. You know, there is fat in the government.
You can reduce the size of the federal government in
the same way that you see every day in America
companies like Starbucks announcing they're reducing the size of their company.
So that is something that is unquestioned. I think the

(03:25):
real question is if you're a federal employee, you're concerned
about losing your job, about making your mortgage about providing
for your family. What do you do if you receive
an email like this one when you're also receiving almost simultaneously,
another email which tells you to do the exact opposite thing.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, not good, Not good, John, Thank you appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Good day. John Ducker, twenty four to seven News, White
House correspondent. Yeah. And I'm getting the feedback here people
are not happy that I that I'm not happy with
the celebratory nature of this, of these firing We've got
to remember not all of these, you know. I think
I think we get a picture on our mind of

(04:06):
these of these uh you know, these government workers they're
just sneaking around, not doing anything, and they know they're worthless,
and that's not the case. There's so many, hundreds of
thousands of them. A lot of them are just in
there doing the job that they were hired to do,
and they're trying to figure out what's happening here and
am I going to be able to support my family?
They just like anybody else in private business who gets fired.

(04:26):
So I don't celebrate people losing their job.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, I think the celebration is about the potential savings
for dolgepayers, draining the swamp, bringing you know, things back
to a more manageable level of what government really should
be and what it should be for and who should
be helping. Yeah, that's what people are celebrating. But it
does come at an expense of some people who maybe

(04:49):
they don't deserve to lose their jobs, and maybe when
it all shakes out, they will still be employed. They'll
be you know, someone will walk around and go, I
don't know why we got rid of Mike, you know,
and they bring Mike back.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
The DOGE has launched an agency Efficiency leader board now
they did this early this morning that shows which government
agencies have saved the most in canceled contracts and other
cost cutting measures. Musk purports that its total estimated savings
as of yesterday are sixty five billion dollars, coming from

(05:25):
a combination of fraud detection, deletion, contract lease cancelations, contract
lease negotiations, asset sales grant cancelations, workforce reductions, and on
and on. We're working to upload all of this data
in a digestible and fully transparent manner with clear assumptions
consistent with applicable rules and regulations. That's from Musk, So

(05:46):
when that thing is up and running, it'll be interesting
to look at