Elon Musk's rise and fall: From Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to a swift exit

Yahoo

a day ago

WAHSINGTON ― Elon Musk arrived at the White House with a bang. He was the chainsaw-wielding government slasher and President Donald Trump's chief sidekick who promised to gut the federal bureaucracy.
But he's leaving four months later without the same swagger, after splitting with Trump over the president's signature tax and spending bill and failing to deliver on the transformational savings that he hoped would drastically reduce the size of government.
The White House appeared ready to move on when Musk ‒ the world's richest man, who was once so close to Trump that he stayed overnight in the White House Lincoln Bedroom during visits ‒ finally announced his formal exit in a May 28 post on X, the social media platform he owns.
"The offboarding process has begun," a White House official told USA TODAY.
Trump, in an evening May 29 post on Truth Social, said he will hold an Oval Office news conference Friday afternoon with Musk in what "will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way."
Here's a look back at what led to Musk's exit and what's next for the Department of Government Efficiency he once led:
DOGE rapidly fanned throughout the federal government, seizing control of information technology infrastructure, axing federal government contracts, eliminating entire agencies and pushing out or firing tens of thousands of federal employees.
But Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is leaving after falling vastly short of his ambitious government savings goal for DOGE.
Musk had set a goal for DOGE to cut $1 trillion from the federal government by the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, to root out what he called "waste, fraud and abuse." He had even talked about $2 trillion in cuts on the 2024 campaign trail when he stumped for Trump.
"I think if we try for $2 trillion, we've got a good shot at getting 1 [trillion]," Musk said on Jan. 9.
But DOGE's savings total posted on its website currently stands at $175 billion worth of cuts, not even 20% of $1 trillion. And this does not even factor in potential exaggerations or errors in DOGE's calculation, which has been a theme in the group's previous declared savings.
Researchers on both the left and the right flagged DOGE for overstating its savings in the Department of Education by hundreds of millions of dollars, and the group was also caught claiming a canceled contract was worth $8 billion when it was actually only $8 million.
And some of DOGE's savings will be offset by the costs of imposing layoffs, defending their legality in court and rehiring workers who win their lawsuits. The nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service estimated that DOGE's actions will cost $135 billion this fiscal year − and that's without accounting for the fact that getting rid of IRS agents will lead to reduced tax revenue.
More: Elon Musk talks Lincoln Bedroom stays, late-night ice cream as he steps back from DOGE
Ahead of his departure, Musk had grown increasingly frustrated by the pace of cuts slowed by the legal setbacks and other political hurdles blocking his efforts to gut the government.
In a May 1 interview with USA TODAY and other media outlets, Musk acknowledged that he might not reach his savings goal. "I may not succeed," Musk said. "There's a lot of inertia in the government with respect to cost savings."
Despite his departure, Musk this week told the Washington Post that DOGE's next focus will be on fixing the federal government's aging computer systems ‒ something far less controversial than taking a battering ram to the federal workforce.
At the peak of his influence, Musk became the most prominent face of the Trump administration besides Trump himself.
Musk started on day one of Trump's second term. And he was everywhere: boarding Air Force One with the president on the way to Mar-a-Lago, next to Trump in the Oval Office, wearing a black MAGA hat with his 4-year-old son, X, on his shoulders, and in a prominent seat at Trump's first joint address to Congress since his return to the White House.
In an especially exuberant display of his power, Trump hoisted a a blinged-out chainsaw gifted by Argentina's President Javier Milei during an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.
After Musk's role in the White House led to a public backlash against Tesla, Trump in March tried to help by opening the White House South Lawn to showcase Tesla vehicles despite blatant ethical concerns.
More: Elon Musk wields chainsaw on stage, says he and Trump are battling 'the matrix'
But gradually, Musk started to fade away as he became a political liability for Trump. Polling has consistently showed more Americans have unfavorable views of Musk than favorable.
Musk clashed with several top Trump officials over his cost-cutting agenda including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump's top trade adviser Peter Navarro.
And Musk suffered an embarrassing setback when he spent $20 million to help the Republican-backed candidate in a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin ‒ declaring "the future of America and Western civilization" was at stake ‒ only to watch the Democrat when by 10 percentage points.
During a Cabinet meeting Trump opened up to reporters in April, Musk spoke only for a few minutes. It was a far cry from Trump's first Cabinet meeting in February, when Musk ‒ wearing a black T-shirt that read "tech support" ‒ dominated the show as he touted DOGE's efforts to purge the government alongside Cabinet secretaries.
A few weeks later, Musk announced he would be scaling back his role at DOGE after Tesla on April 22 reported massive 71% first quarter profit losses coinciding with his polarizing tenure in the White House.
More: Tesla profits plummet 71% amid backlash to Musk's role with Trump administration
Musk's exit as the DOGE leader came as his designation as a "special government employee" ‒ which allowed him to stay on the job for 130 calendar days a year ‒ ended.
His departure leaves an enormous void at DOGE, and it is unclear how much power the group will maintain without its famous leader.
Other top DOGE employees followed Musk out the door, a White House official confirmed. That includes Steve Davis, Musk's top lieutenant who oversaw DOGE's day-to-day operations, publicist Katie Miller and DOGE's top attorney James Burnham. Like Musk, each was working as special government employees.
More: Elon Musk takes a backseat as Donald Trump reaches 100 days in office
DOGE, which has been staffed by more than 100 employees, is set to continue operations until the summer of 2026 under an executive order Trump signed in January.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not point to any one individual who will replace Musk, noting that several DOGE employees have "onboarded as political appointees" at the various agencies they've worked to overhaul.
"The DOGE leaders are each and every member of the president's Cabinet and the president himself," Leavitt said at a May 29 briefing with reporters.
More: Elon Musk leaves the Trump administration, capping his run as federal government slasher
In court filings fighting challenges to Musk's authority, the White House had previously argued he was a White House advisor overseeing DOGE ‒ and not a DOGE employee himself. Instead, Trump attorneys argued the DOGE administrator was Amy Gleason, a lesser-known DOGE aide and former official at the U.S. Digital Service. Leavitt, however, did not mention Gleason as she addressed DOGE's future.
Musk's frustrations in his cost-cutting crusade extended to Trump's domestic agenda outlined in legislation the president has called coined his "big, beautiful bill"
The day before his departure, Musk broke with Trump by criticizing the reconciliation bill, which includes Trump's tax cuts, border security measures and other spending measures that" Musk argued undercuts DOGE's central mission to reduce the deficit.
"I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said in an interview May 27 on "CBS Sunday Morning."
More: Elon Musk 'disappointed' by the cost of Trump's tax bill, says it undermines DOGE work
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion,' Musk said in the interview.
Trump did not take a swipe at Musk when a reporter asked for a response to Musk's remarks. He instead suggested that the high price tag is the result of tough decisions to keep all Republicans on board in the House, where the GOP has a narrow majority.
"We will be negotiating that bill. I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on May 28.
Leavitt also declined to take a parting shot at Musk when asked about his criticism. "We thank him for his service," she said. "We thank him for getting DOGE off of the ground and the efforts to cut waste fraud and abuse will continue
Mush, however, still managed to find the spotlight despite his plans to take on a smaller DOGE role.
Musk tagged along during Trump's three-country swing to the Middle East in mid-May. He was present for Trump's combative May 21 Oval Office meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Musk's native country.
And he continued to speak publicly about politics and his experience with DOGE even as he took part in media interviews designed to spotlight his work with SpaceX and Tesla.
More: 'I've done enough': Elon Musk says he's going to spend 'a lot less' money on politics
Musk, A Republican megadonor who helped bankroll Trump's 2024 campaign, last week said he intends to substantially cut back his political spending in future elections as he focuses more time on his businesses.
"I think in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," Musk said May 20 at the Bloomberg News Qatar Economic Forum. "I think I've done enough."
One week later, in an interview with the Washington Post, Musk complained about DOGE getting unfairly blamed for anything that went wrong in the Trump administration.
'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' Musk said. 'So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.'
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Musk goes from Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to suddenly gone