Trump Baselessly Suggests Fired Federal Workers Were Incompetent at Their Jobs

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump expressed little remorse over his administration’s firing of thousands of government workers through Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), baselessly suggesting that the people who have been fired thus far were incompetent at their jobs.

Trump offered no evidence to back up his claims. The president’s words contradict what data about federal workers has shown — that they are oftentimes more productive than their private sector counterparts.

When asked by reporters about fired federal workers, Trump responded:

I feel very badly, but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work. Many of them, many of them never showed up to work.

Trump further claimed that the job cuts were targeting “people that aren’t working or are not doing a good job.”

According to data recently examined by The Washington Post, federal workers, on average, are much more hardworking than the president gives them credit for.

The Post examined data from the American Community Survey, which looked at 13 million workers’ habits over the past decade and found that federal workers are more productive than any other class of worker.

The survey then broke down different types of federal workers, and still found that those working in the public sector tended to work beyond the typical 40-hour work week.

Workers within the armed services worked 48.4 hours per week, the survey found, while postal service workers performed around 41.6 hours per week. All other civil servants worked the same amount, 41.6 hours weekly.

Only one group of workers in the private sector performed more hours of work per week — self-employed “incorporated” workers (usually people who are running their own businesses). Other private sector workers performed 39.4 hours of work per week.

The survey also found that a higher proportion of federal workers tended to work at least 40 hours per week. Among those in the military, 94 percent worked that long or longer; among postal workers, the rate was over 87 percent, and among all other federal workers, it was over 91 percent, well above the 74.4 percent of private sector workers who tended to work over a 40-hour week.

Notably, many of the workers who have been fired are veterans, a class of people that Trump and the Republican Party promised to “take care” of during the 2024 presidential race. Around 3 in 10 of the federal firings so far have targeted veterans, The Associated Press reported.

Local news organizations across the country have interviewed recently fired federal workers who say that the incompetence angle the president and other Republicans are pushing is blatantly wrong.

“My termination letter said that it was due to performance, when I have a performance review that says that’s not the case,” said Michael Slattery, a former scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Kansas City resident Donny Newsom, fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said it was his dedication and drive to give back to his country that led him to pursue a federal government job.

“When I retired from the Navy, my goal was to continue public service. That’s where my heart was, and that’s the most disturbing thing to me” about being fired, Newsom said.

“You keep thinking it’s a dream,” James Stancil, former Veterans Affairs (VA) worker in Milwaukee, told local news station WTMJ. “You keep thinking it’s, you know, this isn’t real, you’ll get a call today. Ah, come on back. You know, we made a mistake.”