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Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk's rise and fall: From Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to a swift exit
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
Globe and Mail
20 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Elon Musk exits DOGE but promises department will still deliver US$1-trillion in cuts
Elon Musk is promising that DOGE will still find US$1-trillion in cuts to U.S. government spending and he will remain an adviser to President Donald Trump, even as the world's wealthiest person leaves Washington having achieved only a small fraction of that target. At a White House news conference on Friday, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump tried to project unity as the former ended his stint leading the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE after Mr. Musk's favourite cryptocurrency. But the South African-Canadian-American billionaire had already criticized the President's centrepiece domestic policy legislation which, if passed, would increase the deficit by US$3.2-trillion, negating DOGE's cuts many times over. And the pair did not outline any plan to reach Mr. Musk's target. 'I'm confident that, over time, we will see US$1-trillion in savings,' Mr. Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black T-shirt reading The Dogefather. 'I'll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser to the President.' Mr. Trump, sitting at the Resolute desk, said that because of Mr. Musk's work, 'we've found things that are unbelievably stupid and unbelievably bad' and praised DOGE's ability at 'working with computers.' Among Mr. Musk's accomplishments, Mr. Trump said, were eliminating US$2-billion 'to Stacey Abrams' and US$8-million 'for making mice transgender.' On the first, Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to a grant to Power Forward Communities, a consortium of charities running environmental programs. Ms. Abrams, whose voter registration work in Georgia may have cost Mr. Trump the state in the 2020 election, was an adviser to one of the groups. On the second, he was referencing National Institutes of Health studies that examined the effects of hormones in mice. DOGE says it has cut US$165-billion in government spending. Musk Watch, a newsletter that covers the billionaire, said it can only verify US$16.3-billion of that number. The modest outcome stands in sharp contrast with both Mr. Musk's grandiose promises and the fiery way he tried to fulfill them. After spending roughly US$275-million to help Mr. Trump get elected, he emerged as the dominant figure in the opening weeks of the new administration. Trump announces plans to double steel tariffs on imports to 50% Trump's new tax bill contains 'sledgehammer' to hit back against foreign digital taxes Mr. Musk's DOGE staffers – many of them university students with little previous experience – ordered layoffs, and immediate program and contract cancellations across the federal government. In his highest-profile move, Mr. Musk shut down the entire United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. Among other things, the move meant cutting off food to civil war-ravaged Sudan, and taking away health care and education from tens of millions of people in low-income countries. Other controversies included cuts to the health department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and efforts to gather up Americans' personal data. Along the way, DOGE and its leader became known for a string of strange spectacles: On one occasion, Mr. Musk wielded a chainsaw onstage at a conservative conference. According to a New York Times report on Friday, Mr. Musk's personal life has been equally chaotic in recent years. He has been taking ketamine, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and Adderall, the newspaper reported, and impregnated multiple women while falsely telling them their relationships were exclusive. Asked about the report, Mr. Musk refused to directly address it. He instead accused the newspaper of 'lies' on a different story, over Russian interference in the 2016 election. 'Let's move on. Next question,' Mr. Musk said. He was also quiet on Mr. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Earlier in the week, Mr. Musk told CBS that he was 'disappointed' in the tax-cuts-and-spending package, which 'undermines the work' of DOGE. He also criticized the legislation's plan to eliminate tax incentives for building green electricity generation and buying electric vehicles. Mr. Musk will now turn his attention back to his own electric carmaker, Tesla, which has suffered a drop in sales since he joined up with the climate-change-denying Mr. Trump. He will also be working on xAI, an artificial intelligence company that may benefit from DOGE's efforts to replace some government workers with chatbots. At Friday's news conference, Mr. Musk had a bruise on his face, which he said was caused by his son, X, punching him while 'horsing around.' Mr. Trump, for his part, praised Mr. Musk for taking rhetorical blows. 'He willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks,' Mr. Trump said, 'because he does love our country.'
Arab News
21 hours ago
- Business
- Arab News
Musk put a spotlight on federal spending, but cut less than he wanted
Elon Musk's effort to dramatically cut government spending is expected to fall far short of his grand early pronouncements, and perhaps even his most modest goals. It didn't have to be that way. According to experts across the ideological spectrum, a major problem was a failure to deploy people who understood the inner workings of government to work alongside his team of software engineers and other high-wattage technology talent. Even that might not have achieved Musk's original target of $2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the entire federal deficit. Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion. The current DOGE results put Musk's efforts well short of President Bill Clinton's initiative to streamline the federal bureaucracy, which saved the equivalent of $240 billion by the time his second term ended. The effort also reduced the federal workforce by more than 400,000 employees. It also seems clear that Musk was unable to change the overall trajectory of federal spending, despite eliminating thousands of jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, in an analysis of Treasury data, shows money is flowing out of government coffers at an even faster pace than the previous two years. 'It was an impossible goal they were trying to achieve. They kept lowering the standards of success," said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "A more knowledgeable DOGE team wouldn't have made insane promises that would be impossible to keep. They set themselves up for failure.' At a White House event with Trump on Friday, Musk said his team would stay in place and renewed the goal of reaching at least $1 trillion in cost savings. 'This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning. The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. It's permeating throughout the government,' Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black blazer over a T-shirt emblazoned with 'The Dogefather.' 'We do expect over time to achieve the $1 trillion.' The early evidence suggests that the goal will be exceedingly difficult to reach. By relying chiefly on information technology experts, Musk ended up stumbling through Washington and sometimes cutting employees vital to President Donald Trump's own agenda. Immigration judges were targeted at the same time the administration was trying to accelerate deportations of people in the U.S. illegally. Likewise, technologists with the Bureau of Land Management were purged from the Department of Interior, despite their significance to clearing the way for petroleum exploration, a Trump administration priority. In many cases, fired employees were rehired, adding administrative costs to an effort aimed at cutting expenditures. Had Musk's team been staffed with experts on what positions are required under federal law to continue efforts such as drilling and immigration enforcement, it could have avoided similar mistakes across multiple departments, Nowrasteh said. 'I just think there were a lot of unforced errors that a more knowledgeable DOGE team would have avoided,' Nowrasteh said. Grover Norquist, president and founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, had a more favorable perspective on Musk's work, saying it should be judged not only by the total dollars saved but his ability to spotlight the issues. 'When you find the problem, you don't know how far the cancer has spread. You just found a cancer cell,' Norquist said. Norquist said it's up to Congress to take the baton and set up a permanent structure to continue where Musk is leaving off. 'I just think it's going to be seen five to 10 years from now as something very big and very permanent,' Norquist said, 'and that was done only because of a guy like Musk, who can come in and shake things up.' Elaine Kamarck, a key figure in Clinton's government efficiency effort, said its efforts were guided by more modest fiscal targets than DOGE. The initiative was led by Vice President Al Gore, and it was aimed at making the government more responsive to people who used it, and focused heavily on updating antiquated hiring and purchasing procedures. It took years and carried into Clinton's second term. 'We went about it methodically, department by department and, yes, used some outside analysts, but they were seasoned government civil servants who knew about government in general,' Kamarck said. Clinton's effort saved $136 billion by the end of Clinton's second term, the equivalent of more than $240 billion today, and contributed to budget surpluses for each of the final four fiscal years he was in office. Kamarck said she expects what she called Musk's 'chaotic' approach will reveal mistakes or oversights that could create crises down the road, such as a transportation problem, response to a natural disaster, or delivery of entitlement benefits. 'These are the things that really hurt presidents, and they are increasing the probability that something is going to happen,' Kamarck said.
New York Times
a day ago
- Business
- New York Times
Assessing Trump's Send-Off for Elon Musk
President Trump celebrated Elon Musk on Friday as the billionaire's tenure as the White House's chief cost cutter was ending. The gathering, styled as a news conference in the Oval Office, signaled an end to a remarkable period of upheaval across the federal bureaucracy, supervised by Mr. Musk and the initiative he led, the Department of Government Efficiency. 'Elon has worked tirelessly, helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations,' Mr. Trump said, omitting that Mr. Musk fell far short of an oft-stated goal of achieving $1 trillion in savings. Here's a fact-check of some of their claims. What Was Said 'We'll remember you as we announce billions of dollars of extra waste, fraud and abuse.'— Mr. Trump This is exaggerated. In listing a litany of contracts and grants canceled by the cost-cutting initiative, Mr. Trump misrepresented several of them and omitted context about others. He repeated the misleading claim that the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated a payment of '$59 million to a hotel in New York City' to house unauthorized migrants. The figure is the amount for a federal grant awarded to the city in the 2024 fiscal year, not the amount paid to one hotel. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Associated Press
a day ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Musk put a spotlight on federal spending, but cut less than he wanted
Elon Musk's effort to dramatically cut government spending is expected to fall far short of his grand early pronouncements, and perhaps even his most modest goals. It didn't have to be that way. According to experts across the ideological spectrum, a major problem was a failure to deploy people who understood the inner workings of government to work alongside his team of software engineers and other high-wattage technology talent. Even that might not have achieved Musk's original target of $2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the entire federal deficit. Musk, whose last day spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency is Friday, slashed his goal for savings from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to finally only $150 billion. The current DOGE results put Musk's efforts well short of President Bill Clinton's initiative to streamline the federal bureaucracy, which saved the equivalent of $240 billion by the time his second term ended. The effort also reduced the federal workforce by more than 400,000 employees. It also seems clear that Musk was unable to change the overall trajectory of federal spending, despite eliminating thousands of jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, in an analysis of Treasury data, shows money is flowing out of government coffers at an even faster pace than the previous two years. 'It was an impossible goal they were trying to achieve. They kept lowering the standards of success,' said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. 'A more knowledgeable DOGE team wouldn't have made insane promises that would be impossible to keep. They set themselves up for failure.' At a White House event with Trump on Friday, Musk said his team would stay in place and renewed the goal of reaching at least $1 trillion in cost savings. 'This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning. The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. It's permeating throughout the government,' Musk said in the Oval Office, wearing a black blazer over a T-shirt emblazoned with 'The Dogefather.' 'We do expect over time to achieve the $1 trillion.' The early evidence suggests that the goal will be exceedingly difficult to reach. By relying chiefly on information technology experts, Musk ended up stumbling through Washington and sometimes cutting employees vital to President Donald Trump's own agenda. Immigration judges were targeted at the same time the administration was trying to accelerate deportations of people in the U.S. illegally. Likewise, technologists with the Bureau of Land Management were purged from the Department of Interior, despite their significance to clearing the way for petroleum exploration, a Trump administration priority. In many cases, fired employees were rehired, adding administrative costs to an effort aimed at cutting expenditures. Had Musk's team been staffed with experts on what positions are required under federal law to continue efforts such as drilling and immigration enforcement, it could have avoided similar mistakes across multiple departments, Nowrasteh said. 'I just think there were a lot of unforced errors that a more knowledgeable DOGE team would have avoided,' Nowrasteh said. Grover Norquist, president and founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Relief, had a more favorable perspective on Musk's work, saying it should be judged not only by the total dollars saved but his ability to spotlight the issues. 'When you find the problem, you don't know how far the cancer has spread. You just found a cancer cell,' Norquist said. Norquist said it's up to Congress to take the baton and set up a permanent structure to continue where Musk is leaving off. 'I just think it's going to be seen five to 10 years from now as something very big and very permanent,' Norquist said, 'and that was done only because of a guy like Musk, who can come in and shake things up.' Elaine Kamarck, a key figure in Clinton's government efficiency effort, said its efforts were guided by more modest fiscal targets than DOGE. The initiative was led by Vice President Al Gore, and it was aimed at making the government more responsive to people who used it, and focused heavily on updating antiquated hiring and purchasing procedures. It took years and carried into Clinton's second term. 'We went about it methodically, department by department and, yes, used some outside analysts, but they were seasoned government civil servants who knew about government in general,' Kamarck said. Clinton's effort saved $136 billion by the end of Clinton's second term, the equivalent of more than $240 billion today, and contributed to budget surpluses for each of the final four fiscal years he was in office. Kamarck said she expects what she called Musk's 'chaotic' approach will reveal mistakes or oversights that could create crises down the road, such as a transportation problem, response to a natural disaster, or delivery of entitlement benefits. 'These are the things that really hurt presidents, and they are increasing the probability that something is going to happen,' Kamarck said. ____ Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed from Washington.
