Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy added his name to the list of people who can’t make heads or tails of the Trump administration’s bizarre, Elon Musk-ordered demand that federal employees provide information on their activities at work.
On Saturday, the Office of Personnel Management—effectively the government’s lead human resources body—sent emails to workers across federal department and agencies telling them to provide a list of their recent accomplishments.
White House advisor Musk said, in a post on his social media platform X, that people who did not respond would lose their jobs.
On Monday, the Trump administration reversed course and told agencies their employees did not have to comply with the request, ABC News reported.
But then Musk claimed federal workers would receive a second email and that failure to respond this time “will result in termination.”
The muddled, disorganized rollout has now brought confusion for a fourth consecutive day.
On Tuesday’s Fox & Friends, Doocy noted how unclear the administration’s actions appear to the outsider, and to federal workers in Musk’s crosshairs.
Fox News’ White House correspondent Madeleine Rivera updated Doocy and his co-hosts on Musk’s latest tweet, adding: “We’ll see if we get more clarity later today.”
And that’s where he zeroed in.
“See, that last word: clarity,“ Doocy said. “There hasn’t been a lot of that. So, for the federal employees who are watching right now: what are they supposed to do?”
Rivera, through no fault of her own, couldn’t offer a definitive answer.
“We’ll see,” she said, adding administration officials have explained that they aren’t taking a “one size fits all approach” to their reductions of the federal workforce.
The Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency task force is leading those efforts.
“There is no doubt that there are a lot of federal workers who are confused by this and they are hoping to get more answers later on today,” Rivera added.
The flurry of confused and conflicting statements coming out of the administration has been fueled from the very top, with President Donald Trump contributing to the dissonant proclamations.
On Monday, the same day his administration was telling agencies to ignore the OPM email, he told journalists in the Oval Office that Musk’s proposal contained a “lot of genius” and claimed workers would end up “sort of semi-fired” if they failed to respond.
Leading Trump allies, including FBI director Kash Patel and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, were among the agency heads who preemptively told their workers to ignore the OPM’s demand.
