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Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) spoke of Elon Musk as a rogue actor when confronted by the confusing and contradictory emails sent to government employees telling them to justify their jobs or be fired.
CNN's John Berman hit the congresswoman with a timeline of the events of the past few days, that began on Saturday when Musk's team emailed two million federal employees asking them what they've done in the last week and claiming a non-answer qualified as a resignation.
By Monday, however, the Trump administration claimed a response was "voluntary."
"But wait, there's more!" Berman quipped. "At 7 p.m. yesterday, Elon Musk tweets, 'Subject to discretion of the president,' they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
Berman then summed up the mixed messages: "So, you'll definitely get fired. You definitely won't get fired. You'll definitely get fired. Do you know which one it is?" he asked Malliotakis.
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"I think there's definitely a lack of coordination here," she answered. "And again, we're seeing Mr. Musk make some decisions that perhaps the White House is not aware of, or that they don't approve of, and then they have to go back and fix it."
Malliotakis continued that it's "perfectly appropriate" for an employer to ask what an employee has accomplished.
"The thing is this, we have a president who appointed very good people to run the various agencies, and these secretaries are the ones who should be looking within their federal agency and looking to see how they can make things better," Malliotakis said. "Whether that means improving job performance, whether it means making things more efficient, making sure that there are metrics in place."
She added, "So, that's the thing here. I feel like there should be more involvement here from the secretaries looking within their own agencies, as opposed to an outsider. I think it's a good endeavor for Mr. Musk to be looking for waste and spending that could be eliminated. And he's done, I think, a good job with a lot of it.
"But, again, I think some of this is happening too fast and furiously. There are rash decisions being made and it needs to kind of slow down a little bit and involve the people who are actually appointed to head these agencies to incorporate efficiencies and changes."
Berman interjected, "It sounds like you think Musk went too far in this one case."
"Well, yes, I do," Mlliotakis answered.
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