Sitting US president Donald Trump, who is a grown adult, has used a Spongebob Squarepants meme to mock US federal employees after forcing them to explain what they did last week or lose their jobs.
As part of the administration’s continued efforts to scale back the federal workforce, an email was sent to US government employees demanding they list off their accomplishments over the last week or resign.
It comes after tech billionaire and unelected head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, said that the email would circulate around federal workplaces to “understand what they got done last week.”
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he said.
In recent weeks, DOGE has been at the heart of controversial moves to cut federal funding and foreign aid. Musk himself has denied staging a “hostile takeover” of the US government, telling reporters in an 11 February press conference to ensure reporters he wants to add “common sense controls” to the Trump administration.
Thousands of employees across the government have been forcefully laid off over continued “large-scale reductions” which also include federal grant funds.
Initiatives include the layoffs of an estimated hundreds of thousands of probationary employees – those who have been on the job for less than a year – according to the Associated Press, as well as workers from the Education, Defense, and Veterans Affairs departments.
Donald Trump, who is 78 years of age, responded to growing concern over the continued dismissal of the government’s civilian federal workforce with a Spongebob Squarepants meme.
Posted to Truth Social, the image depicts the titular Nickelodeon cartoon character scratching his head whilst staring at an edited notepad, which depicts what he “got done last week.”
The list, held by the character Patrick Star, includes sections such as “cried about Trump”, “cried about Musk”, and “made it into the office for once.”
Trump’s behaviour has been widely slammed online, with several people describing him as a “childish bully”. Others described him as “a puerile nihilist”, and some simply branded the meme “embarrassing.”
The attempt by Elon Musk to conduct what he described as a “very basic pulse check” was heavy criticised by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents over 800,000 workers.
In a letter to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), AFGE’s president, Everett Kelley, said: “We believe that employees have no obligation to respond to this unlawful email absent other lawful direction.”
Certain agencies, including the Department of Defense and the FBI, have instructed its staff not to respond.
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