Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced his resignation from the Donald Trump administration, stepping down as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after just four months in the role.
Musk made the surprise announcement late Wednesday evening, expressing gratitude to former President Trump for the opportunity to serve. He noted that while he is stepping aside, the DOGE initiative will continue its mission to reduce wasteful government spending.
But a retweet from the X CEO’s account stated that the departure had not strained his friendship with the president.
“In the coming days, legacy media will try to convince you that President Trump and Elon Musk are no longer friends and that’s why Musk left,” the post reads.
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“What they won’t tell you is that Elon was a Special Government Employee, limited to 130 days of service and that term ends tomorrow.”
Musk’s exit comes a day after he spoke out against a Trump-backed spending bill. The president called it a “Big Beautiful Bill”.
In an unusual criticism of the president, the tech tycoon said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing”.
“I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both, in my personal opinion,” Musk added.
Before Trump was elected, Musk, who played a significant role in seeing him win back the White House, pitched a government cost-cutting initiative multiple times.
Since January 20 when Trump was inaugurated, DOGE has shrunk 11 federal agencies, forcing about 250,000 federal workers out of their jobs.
The agency also claimed to have saved taxpayers $160 billion. Its promise was to save $2 trillion.
A budget model designed by the University of Pennsylvania which tracks weekly treasury data showed that the US government has spent more than it did during the same period last year.
Trump has yet to publicly react to Musk’s departure, marking another bump in the tumultuous relationship between the two-time American president and the world’s richest man.
Musk heavily criticised Trump during his first term.
In recent times, their relationship morphed into a rapid friendship.
A few months earlier, the billionaire tech entrepreneur said he loved Trump as much as a straight man can love another man.
