Trump says he feels 'very badly' for fired federal workers but 'many of them don't work at all'

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he feels "very badly" for the thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs in recent weeks but that "many of them don't work at all."

Asked by NBC News whether he feels responsible for so many people losing their jobs, Trump said: "Sure I do. I feel very badly ... but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work."

"When we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren't working or ... not doing a good job," he told reporters at an Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. "We’re keeping the best people."

Trump referred to the drastic reduction in employees the administration is making at the Education Department this week. Education Secretary "Linda McMahon is a real professional ... very sophisticated businessperson, and she cut a large number, but she kept the best people, and we'll see how it all works out," he said. "But our country was run very badly. I mean, whether it was that or contracts that were signed, that was so bad, so obviously bad."

Trump said billions of dollars of "fat and waste and fraud and abuse is being taken out" of the federal government.

"We have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We're going to move the Department of Education, we're going to move education into the states, so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education," he said.

Trump's claim that many federal employees don't show up to work is baseless. A report compiled by the White House budget office said that as of May 2024, 54% of the 2.28 million civilian federal workforce worked in person while 46.4% were eligible to work remotely. The report said that 10% of civilian personnel actually worked in remote-only positions.

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Backlash has grown in recent weeks over the scale of cuts, led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Musk, the world's richest man and Trump's biggest campaign donor, said this week that DOGE is working in "pretty much" every federal department and plans to double in size.

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The firings have affected workers throughout the federal government — in both Washington and across the country.

In addition to the Education Department's workforce being cut in half, all employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were offered voluntary buyouts last week, and other more recent job cuts or cancellation of government contracts have taken place at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Last week, White House adviser Alina Habba made negative comments about federal employees, saying: “I really don’t feel sorry for them. They should get back to work for the American people, like President Trump and this administration.” She also said military veterans affected by the DOGE-led layoffs may not be “fit to have a job at this moment.”