This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

On Monday afternoon, Donald Trump angrily tried to put a positive spin on the deepening fiasco around Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

He defended Musk's insane email instructing federal employees to list their accomplishments. This has been defied by numerous top officials from

Trump's own administration, but Trump said the idea was great and then spread more confusion

about it. All this comes as Trump is getting hit by more terrible poll numbers this time

on the economy. Trump had some spin to offer on the polls as well. Which raises a question,

does there come a point at which these sorts of bizarre contortions and ramblings undermine support

for Trump among the voters who still, for some reason, see him as a strong, competent,

and decisive leader.

Right of Susan Milligan has a new piece for the new republic, looking at how Republicans have

been portraying Trump lately as a strong daddy figure.

So we're talking to her about why this portrayal is looking more and more absurd by the second.

Thanks for coming back on,

Susan. Glad to be on. Thanks for having me. Okay, to catch people up, Musk sent this email over

the weekend telling federal employees to list their last week's accomplishments and then said that

failure to reply would be taken as resignation. Trump was asked about that on Monday, and then this happened.

He wanted to know what you did this week. You know why he wanted that, by the way?

I thought it was great, because we have people that don't show up to work, and nobody even

knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, tell us what you did this

week. What he's doing

is saying, are you actually working? And then if you don't answer, like you're sort of semi-fired

...