Musk to exit US government role after rare break with Trump over 'Big, Beautiful Bill'
(FILES) Elon Musk shows off a shirt that says "DOGE" as he walks on the South Lawn of the white House after stepping off Marine One upon arrival to the White House in Washington, DC on March 9, 2025. Billionaire Elon Musk on May 28, 2025 said he was leaving his position within the US government after leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in a controversial effort to slash federal spending. "As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," he wrote on his social media platform X. (Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP)
WASHINGTON (AFP): Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday (May 28) announced he was leaving his role in the United States government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with US President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill.
"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," he wrote on his social media platform X.
"The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government," he added.
The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump's bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people.
Musk -- who was a constant presence at Trump's side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses -- also complained that DOGE had become a "whipping boy" for dissatisfaction with the administration.
"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 with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday (May 27).
Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" -- which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate -- offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centrepiece of his domestic agenda.
But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as US$4 trillion over a decade.
"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, which will be aired in full on Sunday (June 1).
The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.
"The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill," Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk's social network, X, after the tech titan's comments aired.
All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.
But Musk's comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.
'Whipping boy'
Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.
Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism.
"DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything," Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X's latest launch on Tuesday.
"Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it."
Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE's failure to achieve all of its goals -- although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors.
"The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realised," he said.
"I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least."
Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down.
Musk's own businesses suffered in the meantime.
Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm's profits slumped.
"People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool," Musk told the Post.
Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars -- the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean.
The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Exclusive-America's next top general in Europe will also lead NATO forces, officials say
WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -President Donald Trump will maintain the traditional role of a U.S. general at the helm of NATO, at least for now, three U.S. officials, a Western official and a NATO source said, even as Washington pushes European allies to take more responsibility for their security. Trump himself privately communicated the decision to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the Western official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon, White House and NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The decision will relieve European NATO allies and even some of Trump's fellow Republicans amid concerns that Washington's tough talk on Europe, and skepticism about the war in Ukraine, could signal a swift retrenchment in America's military leadership. Still, officials say U.S. warnings that Trump's administration needs to shift its focus to Asia and homeland security are sincere. While no decisions have been made, Trump's administration has discussed possible troop reductions in Europe, where about 80,000 U.S. personnel are based today. The next expected U.S. nominee for the positions of both Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and U.S. European Command (EUCOM) is Air Force Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich, the U.S. officials said. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement expected in the coming days. The position of SACEUR, which oversees all NATO operations in Europe, has been filled by a U.S. general since its creation after World War Two. U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the alliance's first SACEUR in 1951. Since taking office in January, Trump's administration has pressured Europe to ramp up its own defense spending, saying Europe should be primarily responsible for defense on the European continent. How quickly Europe assumes such a role remains a big question, and there have been discussions within the administration about the possibility of handing over the job of Supreme Allied Commander Europe to a European nation, officials say. "Make no mistake: President Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into 'Uncle Sucker'," U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters during a visit to NATO headquarters in February. During Trump's first term, maintaining NATO and the leading U.S. role in the alliance was a top priority for his Pentagon chiefs. Retired Marine Corps General Jim Mattis, his first defense secretary, resigned in part because of Trump's skepticism towards NATO. While the United States was still expected to pressure Europe to do more, and could in the future start redirecting U.S. troops elsewhere as part of a broader review of U.S. deployments, the U.S. decision to maintain the role of SACEUR is certain to be welcomed by key allies of Trump in Congress. The two Republican lawmakers who lead the Pentagon's oversight committees in the U.S. Congress issued a rare joint statement in March expressing alarm about a potential U.S. withdrawal from the SACEUR command structure. Grynkewich, who is now the director for operations at the U.S. military's Joint Staff, would succeed Army General Christopher Cavoli, who has been in the role since shortly after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, helping oversee billions of dollars in U.S. security assistance to Kyiv. Trump entered office in January predicting he would be able to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. In the months since, he has found that the conflict is more intractable than he believed and has blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for allowing it to happen. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis)
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
US Supreme Court lets Trump revoke 'parole' status for migrants
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday let President Donald Trump's administration revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president's drive to step up deportations. The court put on hold Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani order halting the administration's move to end the immigration "parole" granted to 532,000 of these migrants by Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal, while the case plays out in lower courts. As with many of the court's orders issued in an emergency fashion, the decision was unsigned and gave no reasoning. Two of the court's three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented. The court botched its assessment of whether the administration was entitled to freeze Talwani's decision pending the litigation, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion. The outcome, Jackson wrote, "undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending." Immigration parole is a form of temporary permission under American law to be in the country for "urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit," allowing recipients to live and work in the United States. Biden, a Democrat, used parole as part of his administration's approach by to deter illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump called for ending humanitarian parole programs in an executive order signed on January 20, his first day back in office. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently moved to terminate them in March, cutting short the two-year parole grants. The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place migrants in a fast-track deportation process called "expedited removal." The case is one of many that Trump's administration has brought in an emergency fashion to the nation's highest judicial body seeking to undo decisions by judges impeding hissweeping policies, including several targeting immigrants. The Supreme Court on May 19 also let Trump end a deportation protection called temporary protected status that had been granted under Biden to about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, while that legal dispute plays out. In a bid to reduce illegal border crossings, Biden starting in 2022 allowed Venezuelans who entered the United States by air to request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a U.S. financial sponsor. Biden expanded that process to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. The plaintiffs, a group of migrants granted parole and Americans who serve as their sponsors, sued administration officials claiming the administration violated federal law governing the actions of government agencies. Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the program's blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put the judge's decision on hold. In its filing, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that Talwani's order had upended "critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry," effectively "undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election" that returned Trump to the presidency. The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court they would face grave harm if their parole is cut short given that the administration has indefinitely suspended processing their pending applications for asylum and other immigration relief. They said they would be separated from their families and immediately subject to expedited deportation "to the same despotic and unstable countries from which they fled, where many will face serious risks of danger, persecution and even death." (Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
Borneo Post
an hour ago
- Borneo Post
Trump gives Musk an Oval Office goodbye
The pair will hold a joint press conference at 1.30pm with Trump attempting to put a positive spin on Musk's departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after just four months. – AFP photo WASHINGTON (May 30): US President Donald Trump hosts a grand Oval Office farewell for Elon Musk today as the world's richest man ends his turbulent reign as the government's cost cutter-in-chief. The pair will hold a joint press conference at 1.30pm (1730 GMT), with Trump attempting to put a positive spin on Musk's departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after just four months. Trump, 78, praised the 'terrific' Musk on Thursday and insisted that his influence would continue despite the South African-born tech tycoon returning to his Space X and Tesla companies. 'This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,' Trump said on his Truth Social network. Vice President JD Musk praised Musk's 'incredible' job in an interview with Newsmax and vowed that 'the DOGE effort will continue.' But the news conference will be a far cry from Musk's first dramatic appearance in the Oval Office in February, when he brought his young son with him and outshone even the attention-seeking president himself. At the time the 53-year-old was almost inseparable from Trump, glued to his side on Air Force One, Marine One, in the White House and at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Yet Musk is now leaving Trump's administration under a cloud, after openly admitting disillusionment with his role, and criticising the Republican president's spending plans. DOGE rampage The right-wing magnate's DOGE has led an ideologically-driven rampage through the federal government, with its young 'tech bros' slashing tens of thousands of jobs. It has also shuttered whole departments including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to huge cuts in foreign aid that critics say will hit some of the world's poorest people and boost US rivals. But DOGE's achievements fell far short of Musk's boasts when he blazed into Washington brandishing a chainsaw at a conservative event and bragged that it would be easy to cut two trillion dollars. Trump also loudly proclaimed that DOGE was cutting 'waste' and would regularly reel off long lists of alleged fraud that Musk's team was discovering, including social security claimants older than the world's oldest person. In reality, the independent 'Doge Tracker' site has counted just US$12 billion in savings so far while the Atlantic magazine put it far lower, at US$2 billion. Musk's Silicon Valley-style 'move fast and break things' mantra was also at odds with some of his Washington colleagues. He clashed with other cabinet members and said in an interview earlier this week that he was 'disappointed' in Trump's recent mega tax and spending bill as it undermined DOGE's cuts. Musk's companies, meanwhile, were suffering. Tesla shareholders called for him to return to work as sales slumped and protests targeted the electric vehicle maker, while Space X had a series of fiery rocket failures. At today's press conference Musk may also face questions over a New York Times report alleging intensive drug use by the tycoon while on the campaign trail for Trump last year. The Times said the 53-year-old told friends he was taking so much of the anesthetic ketamine 'that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use.' Musk has previously admitted to taking ketamine, saying he was prescribed it to treat a 'negative frame of mind' and suggesting his use of drugs benefited Tesla investors. – AFP
