Elon Musk announces departure from US President Trump’s administration
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he is leaving the administration of United States President Donald Trump, where he led a months-long project to cut costs in the federal government.
“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,” he wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday evening.“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk said, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, which he was a top figure in.
An unnamed White House official confirmed the news with Reuters and the Associated Press.
Musk joined the Trump Administration in January with the promise of slashing at least $1 trillion from the US federal budget, although the DOGE website shows it has only achieved about $175bn in savings, or $1,088.96 per US taxpayer.
Musk’s departure coincides with the 130-day limit for “special government employees”, and the White House said DOGE efforts to cut federal spending and restructure the government would continue, according to Reuters.The relationship between the billionaire and the US president, however, appears to have cooled since last year, when Musk poured nearly $300m into Trump’s presidential run.Over the weekend, Musk publicly expressed concerns about Trump’s flagship “big, beautiful bill”– a 1,000-page piece of legislation that extends the president’s 2017 tax cuts while adding work requirements for food assistance and Medicaid.
“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 the news programme CBS Sunday Morning.
The bill also allocates spending for some of Trump’s signature projects, like building a wall between the US and Mexico and raising funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
