On Wednesday evening, Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, addressed rumors and propaganda from left-leaning news outlets, having previously assisted President Donald Trump in developing the Department of Government Efficiency.
Many networks and publications have been portraying Musk’s departure as the leader of DOGE as a result of a feud with the president.
The mainstream media developed this narrative after Musk was critical of the tax cut and spending package being hailed by Trump, saying, “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.”
However, a rule established at the inception of DOGE limits special government employees, such as Elon Musk, to a maximum of 130 days of service. Musk, who began leading the agency on January 20, 2025, is set to reach that limit on Friday, May 30.
Musk has also said that he wants to return to focusing on his business ventures, especially his electric vehicle company, Tesla, which Democrats have assailed and which has been the target of domestic terrorist attacks. On the X platform he owns, Musk also thanked Trump.
“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,” Musk said in a social media post published on X, which is one of the business ventures he owns. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
DOGE claims it has now saved American taxpayers a whopping $175 billion through using a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
In an interview published earlier in the week by Ars Technica, Musk said, “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics, it’s less than people would think, because the media is going to over-represent any political stuff, because political bones of contention get a lot of traction in the media.
“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,” he added.
