Musk Leaving Trump Administration
Billionaire Elon Musk is leaving his government position as senior advisor to US President Donald Trump after attempting to streamline and reform the federal bureaucracy.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to AP.
His departure, announced on Wednesday evening, marks the end of a turbulent chapter that included thousands of layoffs, the elimination of government agencies and numerous lawsuits. The entrepreneur achieved much less than he had hoped for.
He sharply lowered his cost-cutting goal from $2 trillion to $1 trillion, and then to $150 billion, and increasingly expressed frustration with resistance to his goals. At times, he clashed with other senior Trump administration officials who disliked the newcomer's attempts to reform their agencies.
Musk's role working for Trump was always meant to be temporary, and he recently signalled that he would return to running his businesses, such as electric car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX.
But administration officials often gave vague answers to questions about when Musk would step down from the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, and he unexpectedly announced his departure in a post on X.
‘As my planned time as a special government employee is coming to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to cut wasteful spending,’ he wrote.
‘DOGE's mission will only grow stronger over time as it becomes a way of life for the entire government,’ Musk added.
A White House official, who wished to remain anonymous to discuss the changes, confirmed Musk's departure.
Musk announced his decision a day after CBS published part of an interview in which he criticised a central part of Trump's legislative agenda, saying he was ‘disappointed’ with what the president calls his ‘big beautiful bill.’
The bill includes a combination of tax cuts and tougher immigration laws. Musk called it a ‘huge spending bill’ that increases the federal deficit and ‘undermines the work’ of his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.
‘I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both,’ Musk said.
As The Gaze reported earlier, Elon Musk, an American billionaire, owner of the X social network and head of the newly created Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), has called the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) a criminal organisation. He also accused USAID of allegedly funding “biological weapons research and the creation of COVID-19”.