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WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he wrote on his social media platform X.
“The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.
The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump’s bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people.
White House thanks the billionaire ‘for his service’
Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump’s side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for dissatisfaction with the administration.
The White House expressed thanks to Elon Musk on Thursday after the billionaire tech tycoon said he was leaving his cost-cutting role in US President Donald Trump’s administration.
“We thank him for his service. We thank him for getting DOGE off of the ground, and the efforts to cut waste, fraud and abuse will continue,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, referring to Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency.
“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 said in an interview with CBS News.
Break with Trump
Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.
“A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.
The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.
“The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.
All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added. But Musk’s comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.
‘Whipping boy’
Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.
Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2025
