Elon Musk expressed gratitude to President Trump in a Wednesday message marking the end of his special government employee status, the latest sign of his declining involvement in the White House.
In a post on X, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a panel focused on dramatically slashing the size of the federal budget and workforce.
“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 wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter before he purchased it in 2022.
“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
As a special government employee, Musk was limited to 130 days in service to Trump and spent much of the start of the new administration close by the president’s side.
Musk made clear during the start of his DOGE tenure that he planned to be a force in politics in some capacity after the end of his official government status. But as Musk and DOGE’s mission fell by the wayside to Trump’s tax cut package, which is expected to add trillions to the national debt, the tech billionaire has pivoted harder back toward his business empire.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” Musk said Saturday in response to a post on X about the platform’s recent outages.
“I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out,” he added, referring to a launch planned by SpaceX, his space company.
Shares of Tesla soared Tuesday in response to Musk’s new attention after the market opened following Memorial Day. Later that day, Musk expressed frustration with Trump’s major policy bill in a clip of a CBS interview to be aired in full Sunday.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a preview of an interview set to air this weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
Trump waived off Musk’s criticism when asked about his comments Wednesday, defending the measure while acknowledging it includes provisions he doesn’t like, but are necessary to pass Congress.
“We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump said. “That’s the way it goes. It’s very big, it’s the big, beautiful, but the beautiful is because of all the things that we have.”
