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Elon Musk is formally stepping down from his role in the Trump administration after just five months, ending a tumultuous period during which he oversaw cost-cutting by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
In a post on Wednesday on X, Musk, who began scaling back his work at Doge last month, said: “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 world’s richest man was a “special government employee”, a category within the US civil service that restricts staff from working for more than 130 days in a year for the administration.
However Musk originally intended to lead Doge until next summer, and officials believed there were workarounds to keep him on board for longer, according to people familiar with the matter.
Musk seemed to suggest that the initiative would continue without him, adding on X: “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
A White House official said that Musk’s “off boarding” had begun.
Musk originally pledged to cut up to $2tn from the annual federal budget, or almost one-third of all government spending. As of May, Doge had only claimed $175bn in savings, and many of the line items that made up that figure were found to be unverifiable by the Financial Times.
The Tesla chief executive has in recent weeks blamed lawmakers for Doge’s slow progress and criticised the House Republican tax bill that passed last week — Trump’s top priority in Congress.
Non-partisan estimates have found that the bill, which still needs to go through the Senate, would add more than $3.3tn over the next decade to the US deficit.
“I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS in an interview that will air on Sunday. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”
Musk, who has a net worth of more than $428bn according to Forbes, was Trump’s top donor in the 2024 campaign and spent more than $250mn to boost his candidacy. He recently said he intended to spend a “lot less” on campaigns in the future, and that he had “done enough” donating to political causes.
In recent weeks, Musk has committed to returning “24/7” to his businesses, after Tesla in particular suffered a sharp sales slump in part due to his association with the Trump administration.
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