May 28 (UPI) — Elon Musk, who personally spent $277 million to bring Donald Trump back to the White House, said Wednesday night he is leaving the Trump administration after working to slash the size of the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of $421.2 billion, according to Forbes, can work for 130 days in a calendar year as a special employee. His full-time tenure would end on Friday after joining Trump in the White House for the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Musk posted to X, the social media platform he owns: “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending. The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
Musk told reporters earlier this week that he plans to focus more on his businesses: Tesla, SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI, which now includes X.
Musk said he will keep a small office in the White House as an unofficial adviser.
During a Tesla earnings call in April, Musk said he would spend a “day or two per week” on government work until the end of Trump’s term in January 2029.
There are around 100 DOGE employees, including many embedded in agencies. Their status wasn’t announced.
Musk told reporters last week that he had worked in Washington, D.C., on his DOGE initiative “seven days a week, or close to seven days a week” during Trump’s first 100 days in office. He frequently traveled on Air Force One with Trump to the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., and recently to the Middle East.
This has meant less attention to his companies, including publicly held Tesla, the company that makes electric vehicles, solar panels/shingles and energy storage devices.
“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,” he said in an interview with Ars Technica.
Tesla released its first-quarter financial data on April 22.
Tesla’s revenue was its lowest in three years: $19.3 billion total, down 9% compared with the same time last year. The company’s profit was $3.15 billion, which is a 15% decline. And its earnings of 27 cents a share was a drop of 70% from 45 cents a year ago.
In the first quarter, Tesla produced more than 362,000 vehicles.
On Wednesday, pension fund leaders sent a letter to Tesla’s board demanding that Musk must put in 40 hours per week, at a minimum, to attain any future CEO pay package.
Protests were mounted at dealerships nationwide as people opposed Musk’s program and worker cuts.
He said his efforts have been far more challenging than expected and DOGE had become “the whipping boy for everything.”
During an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Musk said “something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it. People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”
Musk originally said he would slash $2 trillion in spending but now he says $175 billion in taxpayer money has been saved but experts say that number is greatly inflated.
He also became at odds with Trump on Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package going through Congress.
“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 told CBS Sunday Morning. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both.”
He spoke to reporters from SpaceX headquarters in Texas before Tuesday night’s Starship test flight.
“People want to have the chill vibes, and SpaceX is sort of ultra hardcore. But if we’re not ultra hardcore, how are we going to get to Mars? You’re not going to get to Mars in 40 hours a week,” Musk told The Post.
Besides sending astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, SpaceX has launched 8,774 Starlink satellites from Florida and California since May 2019.
Starlink is used by several federal agencies, including the State Department, Coast Guard, Interior Department and the Space Force. The Federal Aviation Administration is exploring whether to use Starlink to replace its aging telecommunications system.
