'No idea what he's doing': Series of bumbles and mistakes makes clear Musk is in over his head

today we can add to the list of principled resignations 21 people from Doge uh people who had been held over from the US digital service because they were expected to work with Elon musk's team at Doge 21 of them resigned today saying quote we will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems to jeopardize American sensitive data or to dismantle critical Public Services we will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimate Doge's actions again 21 members of the Doge Service uh resigning today the thing that is emerging we're now five

weeks and a day into this thing the thing that is emerging as as the real weak card in their hand and I don't know if we should have known to expect this or not but it's just becoming more and more increasingly obvious with each passing day their weakness is that they kind of suck at what they're trying to do I'm sorry to use that phrase but they really do appear to be terrible at their intentional actions right and you know you don't want like a surgical robot to be terrible at what it does you don't

want your letter carrier or your research scientist or your park ranger to be terrible at what they do we need those folks to be good at what they do and by and large they are the person you actually want to be ter terrible at his job is the guy who thinks it's his job to destroy your country's government and Elon Musk is turning out to be very much up to that task I mean amid all the push back of all these various kinds the best assistance the push back is getting from the Trump and Elon

Musk side is that Elon Musk really does appear to have no idea what he is doing and it is showing more and more every day and so it is really hurting what he is trying to do which is so sad just take for example a a short version of this Saga from the last few days of Elon Musk initi initiating this email to all federal workers including hopefully some people who no longer have access to their email because he ordered that they be put on leave and locked out of government computer systems oops but that's

how he's trying to contact them now by sending them emails to email addresses he won't allow them to check awesome but this email as you know told everybody that they needed to give Elon Musk a list of the things they had done in the past week or else if they didn't send him this list that would be taken as a resignation and immediately we saw multiple government agencies tell their workers do not do this do not respond to this the defense department the FBI the office of the Director of National Intelligence the state department the

Homeland Security Department the education department the Commerce Department the FDIC the IRS the energy Department FEMA the CDC the Nia the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration our beloved Noah they all told the people who work at those agencies do not respond to this and and in that list I just mentioned a few different components of the Department of Health and Human Services just looking at that one Agency for a second to get a sense of how this played in an agency that is now R by Robert F Kennedy Jr uh I mean look at how

this played there Elon Musk sends this like middle of the night insane email to everybody who works at HHS everybody who works in the rest of the government at HHS they initially told their employees Sunday morning that they needed to respond to this email and do what Elon Musk said then an hour later an email went out from the Trump appointed acting director of the NIH which is part of health inment services and that person told all NIH employees oh no no no no no no no do not respond to this then a few hours

after that HHS as overall agency told all employees actually pause maybe hold hold just a second we're not sure the ultimate advice given to people who work at HHS was that they could respond to em Elon musk's threatening email if they wanted to but they didn't have to and if they did quote do not identify by name or title any other HHS employees with whom you have been working do not identify by case name or otherwise matters you are working on do not identify any specific grants or contracts or any specific grantees or contractors if

you are engaged in any scientific experiments research or reviews do not provide information that could allow anyone to identify the precise nature of your work the advice ended with this quote assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly that's how well this thing is going the office of personal management which is the entity under which musk sent out this insane like apparent prank email um the office of personal management then tried to sort of cancel musk threatening email saying oh we can't believe anybody took that seriously

why did you think you had to do that obviously complying with that request would be totally voluntary you don't have to respond and if you don't send it back that won't be taken as your res where did you get that idea that forget everything we just said email from the office of personnel management appeared to be a KnockOn effect sort of a side effect requirement that they didn't foresee that had been set in motion thanks to another legal entanglement the musk gang got themselves into when they set up this dodgy government-wide email system that enabled

this nonsense in the first place as part of setting up that email system they apparently promised that any email they sent on that dodgy system would never involve compelled compliance to respond from government workers so then when they told government workers you'll be fired if you don't respond they had to say just kidding it was a weekend it was late we were a little you know then Elon Musk thereafter said no no no I mean it you do have to respond I mean if you were like in a grunge band in 1977 and all of

you did like a lot of drugs if one of you tried to fire the other members of the band the rest of the band wouldn't take you seriously trying to do it this way and here is the president's top campaign donor saying this is how he's firing the whole federal government really