Donald Trump issues stern warning to federal workers who don't respond to Elon Musk's controversial email

The president has now weighed in on Elon Musk's controversial email with a stark warning to federal employees.

On Saturday (February 22), two million federal employees received a threatening email from Donald Trump's 'First Buddy', which demanded they outlined five tasks they'd completed in the last week - or else face not having a job to return to.

Musk, who heads up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force, sent the email with a deadline of 11.59pm, Monday (February 24), and said those who failed to respond on time would be interpreted by the government as notice of their resignation.

Trump appears to be backing Musk's controversial email (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The demand sent federal teams into a frenzy over the weekend with many department leaders, such as FBI director, Kash Patel, advising staff not to respond.

Another Pentagon official said it was the 'silliest thing' in their 40-year-long career.

But the billionaire tech mogul doubled down on his email, saying he wanted to identify 'who had a pulse and two working neurons' and to see who in the workforce actually checked their emails.

The 53-year-old also lashed out at the 'incompetence' of staff who didn't respond to the 'utterly trivial' request by the deadline on Monday night and gave them a fresh ultimatum.

Musk wrote on Twitter: "The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send! Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers."

The pair are reportedly close friends (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)

"Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are," he added.

The President also appeared to have supported the SpaceX founder's plan, saying there was a 'lot of genius' to the email on Monday.

Musk subsequently posted that the deadline has been extended 'subject to the discretion of the president'.

"[T]hey will be given another chance," he wrote while reiterating those who fail or ignore them email 'will result in [their] termination'.

President Trump has now spoken out about the situation during a meeting with French president, Emmanuel Macron.

Trump said: "We're trying to find out if people are working, and so we're sending a letter to people: Please tell us what you did last week.

"If people don't respond, it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working. And then if you don’t answer, like you’re sort of semi-fired, or you're fired, because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist."

The president's backing comes as Musk's DOGE is on a cost-cutting mission, which includes axing staff to reduce the size of the bureaucracy.

It also comes as Trump instructed the Tesla boss to 'get more aggressive'.

According to NBC, DOGE plans on taking the data from the email responses and putting them into an AI system to check what employees are doing are 'mission-critical'.