A
Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington
The
billionaire has made clear he is frustrated with the obstacles he encountered
as he tried to upend the federal bureaucracy.
Tyler Pager Maggie Haberman Theodore Schleifer Jonathan Swan Ryan Mac
By Tyler
Pager Maggie Haberman Theodore Schleifer Jonathan Swan and Ryan Mac
May 28, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-doge.html?searchResultPosition=7
Elon Musk
took a swipe at President Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation, saying
it would add to the national deficit. He complained to administration officials
about a lucrative deal that went to a rival company to build an
artificial-intelligence data center in the Middle East. And he has yet to make
good on a $100 million pledge to Trump’s political operation.
Mr. Musk,
who once called himself the president’s “first buddy,” is now operating with
some distance from Mr. Trump as he says he is ending his government work to
spend more time on his companies. Mr. Musk remains on good terms with Mr.
Trump, according to White House officials. But he has also made it clear that
he is disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he
encountered as he upended the federal bureaucracy, raising questions about the
strength of the alliance between the president and the world’s richest man.
Mr. Musk was
the biggest known political spender in the 2024 election, and he told Mr.
Trump’s advisers this year that he would give $100 million to groups controlled
by the president’s team before the 2026 midterms. As of this week, the money
hasn’t come in yet, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes dynamic.
Mr. Musk did
not respond to a request for comment. In a post on X, his social media site, on
Wednesday night, he officially confirmed for the first time that his stint as a
government employee was coming to an end and thanked Mr. Trump “for the
opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”
“The @DOGE
mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout
the government,” he added, referring to his Department of Government Efficiency
team.
The
billionaire’s imprint is still firmly felt in official Washington through that
effort, an initiative to drastically cut spending that has deployed staff
across the government. But Mr. Musk has said in recent days that he spent too
much time focused on politics and has lamented the reputational damage he and
his companies have suffered because of his work in the Trump administration.
“I think I
probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Mr. Musk said in an
interview this week with Ars Technica, a tech news outlet.
He added:
“It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on
the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”
He also took
a swipe at Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress, telling CBS News that he was
“disappointed” by the domestic policy bill that the president championed and
the House passed last week.
“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,” he said.
When asked
by reporters about Mr. Musk’s criticisms on Wednesday, Mr. Trump declined to
respond directly. He defended the bill while acknowledging that he did not love
every aspect of it, and he lauded Republicans’ efforts to move it forward. He
did not once utter Mr. Musk’s name.
However,
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, shot back at
Mr. Musk on social media without naming him. Mr. Miller asserted that the bill
would reduce the deficit — despite multiple independent analyses saying
otherwise — and noted that the cuts made by Mr. Musk’s team were unrelated to
the spending bill.
Ahead of Mr.
Trump’s trip to the Middle East this month, Mr. Musk objected to a deal in the
works between a rival A.I. company and the United Arab Emirates to build a
massive data center in Abu Dhabi, according to a White House official.
Mr. Musk
complained to David Sacks, the president’s A.I. adviser, and other White House
officials about the Abu Dhabi project involving OpenAI, an organization he
founded with Sam Altman, with whom he has since had a falling out, according to
the official. He also expressed concerns about fairness more broadly for other
A.I. companies, and sought to have his own company, xAI, be included in the
deal, though it ultimately was not. The Wall Street Journal first reported Mr.
Musk’s pushback.
The OpenAI
deal followed a plan secured between the Trump administration and the United
Arab Emirates to build an A.I. campus in Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Musk
joined the president on his trip through the Middle East, but Mr. Trump hardly
mentioned his name publicly. And foreign officials in the Gulf seemed more
interested in seeking out Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the region, Steve
Witkoff, than they were in Mr. Musk.
On May 14,
as a crowd of Mr. Trump’s wealthy supporters milled inside Qatar’s Lusail
Palace before a dinner with the emir, Mr. Musk waited along with everyone else
in the receiving line to shake Mr. Trump’s hand.
The
billionaire’s role on the sidelines is a drastic shift from his dominance early
in the new administration.
In February,
Mr. Musk leaped onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a
chain saw and remarked “how easy” it was to “save billions of dollars sometimes
in, in an hour.”
“Yeah, like,
it’s wild,” he said.
Mr. Musk’s
DOGE team has repeatedly inflated its cost-saving efforts, at times posting
erroneous claims about ending federal contracts that they later deleted.
This week,
Mr. Musk told The Washington Post that it was an “uphill battle trying to
improve things in D.C.”
The cuts he
wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of
interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his
efforts, particularly on Capitol Hill, according to people familiar with his
efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal
discussions.
For the
first 90 days of the administration, some White House aides felt the
administration was essentially held captive by Mr. Musk and his willingness to
use X to target people he didn’t like. Mr. Musk had a direct pipeline to Mr.
Trump and encouraged measures that some cabinet officials opposed, like forcing
federal workers to send a weekly email listing their top five accomplishments
or risk termination. (That requirement was lifted for civilian employees at the
Defense Department this week.)
Mr. Musk
kept Mr. Trump enthralled, until some of the headlines about DOGE’s work — and
complaints from lawmakers and cabinet officials — became hard to tune out. A
rupture for the president, according to people with knowledge of his thinking,
came when he learned from a New York Times report that Mr. Musk was about to
receive a sensitive briefing on China at the Pentagon. Mr. Trump, who had
repeatedly fended off questions about Mr. Musk’s potential conflicts of
interest, was displeased, the people said.
Mr. Musk’s
own disillusionment with national politics can be traced back to two recent
events, according to people close to him: his frustrations with the president’s
tariff regime and the roughly $25 million he spent backing a candidate who
ended up losing a judicial bid in Wisconsin.
When it
comes to his efforts to upend the bureaucracy, Mr. Musk insisted last month
that it is possible to meet his goal of slashing $1 trillion of federal
spending, “but it’s a long road to go, and, you know, it’s really difficult.”
“It’s sort
of, how much pain is, you know, are the cabinet and is Congress willing to
take?” he told reporters at the White House. “Because it can be done, but it
requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
He said it
remained to be seen whether there was “sufficient political will in Congress
and elsewhere to actually do that.”
It is
unclear how many of Mr. Musk’s most prominent deputies will stay ensconced in
their new government roles. Antonio Gracias, the billionaire investor, has
transitioned from leading the DOGE team at the Social Security Administration
to a role combing through federal databases to try to identify instances of
foreign nationals voting illegally, according to people familiar with the
effort.
Steve Davis,
a loyal executive who has worked for Mr. Musk across many of his businesses,
including at X, had remained a regular presence at the General Services
Administration, according to two people who have interacted with him recently.
But on Thursday, a White House official said that Mr. Davis was following Mr.
Musk in leaving DOGE.
Last month,
Mr. Musk told Tesla investors and analysts that he would cut his time on
government matters to “a day or two per week,” and since then, he has made a
concerted effort to show that he is re-engaged at his companies.
“Back to
spending 24/7 at work,” Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, posted
on X on Saturday. “I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla.”
On Tuesday,
SpaceX held a test flight of Starship, the rocket that Mr. Musk hopes will
someday take humans to Mars. The vehicle had a successful launch, but sprang a
leak halfway through its journey and eventually exploded. On X Mr. Musk called
the launch a “big improvement,” but postponed a planned talk he was set to give
on “SpaceX’s plan to make life multiplanetary.”
He made it
clear, however, that he was in attendance at the launch and focused on SpaceX.
He reposted interviews with influencers and news organizations as well as a
video of himself sitting in a control center while wearing a shirt that said
“Occupy Mars.”
Kate Conger,
Nicholas Nehamas and John Ismay contributed reporting.
Tyler Pager
is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his
administration.
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President
Trump.
Theodore
Schleifer is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the
world.
Jonathan
Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of
Donald J. Trump. Contact him securely on Signal: @jonathan.941
Ryan Mac
covers corporate accountability across the global technology industry.
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