Elon Musk scales back role in Trump's DOGE
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Elon Musk has quit the Department of Government Efficiency and bid farewell to the White House just one day after he publicly split with President Donald Trump. The former First Buddy praised the president in an apparent effort to depart on good terms after he slammed Trump's 'big beautiful bill' and admitted he was disappointed with the treatment his DOGE team had received.
But the situation came to a head on Tuesday night when Musk offered several points of criticism from his South Texas Starbase ahead of his latest SpaceX launch. 'It undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk bluntly told CBS of the $3.8trillion spending bill. 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it.' Musk - who spoke to multiple outlets about the White House betrayal - went on to decry the treatment he and his baby-faced DOGE henchmen had received. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' he told the Washington Post. 'Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.'
After helping Trump win the 2024 election with outrageous financial contributions and stage-jumping endorsements, Musk earned the title of 'First Buddy' in the White House. For the first several months of Trump's second term, Musk was everywhere - briefing Trump personally, gutting federal departments and even bringing his son, X, along to crucial meetings in the Oval Office. But his arrival ruffled feathers both within the political establishment a nd among governmental employees, particularly when he set about mercilessly slashing jobs in an effort to root out wasteful spending. 'People burning Teslas,' he told the Post. 'Why would you do that?'
As Tesla showrooms around the nation became the epicenters of violent protests , stock prices nosedived and reports emerged that the board was seriously considering replacing Musk. 'I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,' Musk admitted in a separate interview with ARS Technica. 'It's not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks.'
Musk twisted the knife a little further with outspoken criticism of Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill.' 'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both,' he said. 'My personal opinion.' The bill is estimated to add another $3.8 trillion to the national debt which currently stands at a monstrous $36 trillion. 'The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,' he said. 'I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.'
Musk saved an estimated $160billion in what he labeled wasteful government spending by decimating or shutting down 11 federal agencies - putting about 250,000 federal employees out of work in the process. But even that number is a far cry from the $2trillion he vowed to save when DOGE was launched, and it has cost him immensely with mounting lawsuits and global protests against both he and his companies.
He stepped back from his high-profile role recently to refocus on his lifelong goal of colonizing Mars amid whispers his friendship with Trump was on the rocks and that he'd made enemies within the White House. Despite all the rumors, Trump praised Musk as he revealed the billionaire had taken a step back from DOGE and said he would have been welcome to 'stay as long as you want.'
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