President Donald Trump said Saturday that “nobody has ever seen anything” like his administration’s sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees and shrink the size of government, congratulating himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing.”
Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington, Trump promised, “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come.”
The president has spent the opening weeks of his administration arguing that voters in November gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the U.S.-Mexico border and to extend tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during a speech that lasted more than an hour, predicting that the GOP will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president’s party typically struggles during midterm congressional elections. He insisted of Republicans, “I don’t think we’ve been at this level, maybe ever.”
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this, and nobody’s ever seen four weeks like we had,” Trump said, likening his new administration’s opening month to being on a roll through the first four holes of a round of golf, which he said gave him confidence for the fifth.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, and the billionaire vowed Saturday that more might be coming.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email message that went out on Saturday instructs federal workers to send around five bullet points on their accomplishments in the past week, according to screenshots viewed by NBC News.
Employees should reply by Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET, without sending classified information, links or attachments, the message said.
Trump also repeatedly said Saturday that he’d carry out harder-line immigration policies. But those efforts have largely been overshadowed by his administration’s mass federal firings. He announced that one agency that had been significantly reduced, the U.S. Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
“The agency’s name has been removed from its former building,” he said.
The president also repeated his previous promises that his administration will scrutinize the country’s gold depository at Fort Knox.
“Would anybody like to join us,” he said to cheers from the crowd. “We want to see if the gold is still there.”
But Trump also devoted large chunks of his address reliving last year’s presidential race, jeering at former President Joe Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former Vice President Kamala Harris — his Election Day opponent — gleefully proclaiming, “I haven’t said that name in a while.”
He even mentioned Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who ran for president in 2020.
The president said immigration and border policy under Biden made him angry. “I couldn’t stand it,” Trump said, before cautioning himself, “Donald, don’t get angry.” He went on to use an expletive to describe how he thinks of Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives have urged him not to use foul language.
Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him, while adding, “We’ve been treated very unfairly by China and many other countries.”
On the sidelines of the conference, Trump met with conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda amid rising tensions in Europe over Russia’s war in Ukraine. After he took the stage, Trump saluted Duda and Argentine President Javier Milei, who himself separately addressed the conference.
Trump called Duda “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine” and said “you must be doing something right, hanging out with Trump.” He noted that Milei was “a MAGA guy, too, Make Argentina Great Again.”
Duda is a populist who has enjoyed a close relationship with Trump in years past. Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent U.S. policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending fighting in Ukraine.
Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, which has alarmed U.S. allies. After his face-to-face with Duda, Trump is meeting on Monday at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron and Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump also has begun a public back and forth with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom the U.S. president called a “dictator” while falsely suggesting that Ukraine started the war — though on Friday he acknowledged that Russia attacked its neighbor.
Trump said during his speech, “I’m dealing with President Zelenskyy. I’m dealing with President Putin” and added of fighting in Ukraine, “It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”
Zelenskyy has said Trump is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.”
For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under Biden, pledged that Ukraine would play in any major effort to end the fighting, vowing “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Trump’s administration has dispensed with that notion, as the Republican president has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.
“I think we’re pretty close to a deal, and we better be close to a deal,” Trump said Saturday of ending the war in Ukraine.
Later, the president and first lady Melania Trump were hosting an evening reception and dinner at the White House for the National Governors Association, which was holding their own weekend meetings in Washington.
