Elon Musk announces final departure from the White House a day after criticizing Trump

Elon Musk is bidding farewell. The wealthiest person in the world announced Wednesday on his X account that he is permanently leaving his duties at the White House. His departure came the day after the release of a preview of an interview in which he criticized President Donald Trump.

In the interview, Musk says he is disappointed by the “enormous public spending” that will result from the tax law that the Republicans in Congress are processing with the support of the president. Trump has entrusted the success of his legislative agenda to the passing of this legislation, which he has baptized, always faithful to his particular language, as the “big, beautiful bill.”

“I think it can be big, and I think it can be beautiful, but I doubt it can be both at the same time,” Musk said in the clip of the interview made public on Tuesday, before its broadcast next weekend. “That’s a personal opinion.”

“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. “The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

White House sources confirmed after the post was published that Musk’s “departure” from Washington has been in effect since “Wednesday night” and that his relationship with the president remains friendly, although it’s undeniable that the public rapport the two displayed in the early stages of Trump’s return to the White House has vanished.

Thus concludes one of the most extravagant forays into politics in U.S. history, in the same week in which Musk has given two other interviews, in conjunction with Tuesday’s launch of the Starship mega-rocket, which ended in a third consecutive failure. In one of those interviews, the businessman acknowledges that he was wrong to “devote so much time to politics.” In another, he admits that “it’s very difficult to get things done in Washington.”

Officially, Musk’s White House story began on the day of Trump’s inauguration, with the former twice making what looked like a Nazi salute in front of a basketball court packed to the rafters with fervent supporters of the new president.

In reality, it all began earlier, when the tycoon, who had previously shown Democratic sympathies, embraced the Republican candidate in the summer of 2024, after the latter survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. He then contributed a record amount of more than $260 million to his campaign.

Once Trump returned to the White House, the South Africa-born tycoon immediately took charge of DOGE, an organization for which he recruited a handful of young engineers who raided dozens of government agencies and fired tens of thousands of employees. This work has met with notable opposition in the federal courts, resulting in a handful of rulings against it.

Before Trump’s election victory, Musk claimed that by controlling this “government spending chainsaw,” he would be able to save taxpayers $2 trillion. He later revised his promise to a $1 trillion cut. DOGE is estimated to have found around $175 billion in “waste, fraud, and abuse” so far, a figure far below the initial targets.

That job — for which he didn’t receive a salary, but which raised serious conflict-of-interest concerns for a businessman who was meddling with an administration with which he was doing lucrative business — brought serious consequences. Not only did he become a symbol of Trump’s most brutal policies, as well as the target of criticism from Democratic activists and politicians, but his businesses, especially the electric vehicle company Tesla, also suffered. The DOGE cuts were met with attacks on dealerships, charging stations, and company vehicles.

That prompted the first announcement of his retirement. “I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful,” the businessman said on April 22 in a call with analysts to present the company’s results. He had something to reveal: the electric vehicle manufacturer’s profit plummeted 71% in the first quarter.

Musk then began to spend less time in Washington, disappointed with the difficulty of achieving results in that particular environment, where he never fit in, despite practically moving into the White House.

During his four months in the city, there was also time for clashes with members of Trump’s cabinet over the trauma of the cuts he was undertaking as head of DOGE, and for his criticism of the U.S. government’s aggressive tariff policy.

Special Employee

The businessman entered Trump’s orbit as a “special government employee,” a position created by Congress in 1962 that allows the government or legislative branch to hire temporary workers for specific tasks, provided they have an expiration date.

Among the conditions of these contracts is a limit of working “for a maximum of 130 days in any 365-day period,” according to the Office of Government Ethics website. Musk’s term was due to expire next Friday. The end of DOGE is set in the executive order with which Trump granted it legal status for July 4, 2026, when the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary.

The bill Musk criticized Tuesday is more than 1,000 pages long and includes significant tax cuts that will not be offset by the cuts in healthcare and food aid it incorporates. Some independent analyses estimate that it will contribute to an increase in debt of more than $3 trillion over the next decade. And that, for obvious reasons, goes against the spirit of DOGE.

The bill passed by a single vote in the House of Representatives. It is now moving through the Senate, where some Republican senators have expressed concern about its impact on the deficit and debt. If amendments are introduced, it will have to return to the House.

Long gone are the days when Musk could cause a veritable earthquake on Capitol Hill with a few calls to members of Congress. It happened last December, when the love affair between the “first buddy” and the President of the United States seemed unbreakable.

Six months later, Musk is packing his bags and leaving Washington, defeated by the stubborn reality of a city he believed could be turned around, as the famous saying goes: by acting fast and breaking things. This Wednesday, it became definitively clear that, at least in this regard, the world’s richest man was wrong.

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