Washington, May 29, 2025 – American billionaire Elon Musk is leaving US President Donald Trump’s administration after a tumultuous efficiency campaign that ultimately failed to deliver the desired savings.
This was reported by Reuters.
“His dismissal will begin tonight,” a White House spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday evening, confirming Musk’s withdrawal from the government.
Musk also expressed his gratitude to President Donald Trump on his social media platform X, as his term as Special Government Employee for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) comes to an end.
“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. The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk wrote.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Musk did not have a formal conversation with Trump before announcing his withdrawal, adding that the decision to leave was made “at the senior management level.”
The publication notes that while the exact circumstances of his withdrawal were not immediately clear, he is leaving a day after criticizing Trump’s landmark tax bill, calling it too expensive and undermining his work with the US DOGE service.
The source said that some senior White House officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, were particularly irritated by the comments, and the White House was forced to call Republican senators to confirm Trump’s support for the package.
So, while Musk remains close to the President, his withdrawal comes after a gradual but steady decline in his authority.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the billionaire has quickly become a powerful force in Trump’s circle: highly visible, uncompromisingly brash, and unfettered by traditional norms.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, he brandished a red metal chainsaw to a standing ovation. “It’s a chainsaw for the bureaucracy,” he declared.
During the campaign, Musk said that DOGE could cut federal spending by at least USD 2 trillion. DOGE currently estimates that its efforts have saved USD 175 billion, a figure Reuters has not been able to independently verify.
Sources said that some cabinet members who initially supported Musk’s energy have become wary of his tactics.
They have since become more assertive in their opposition to job cuts, emboldened by Trump’s reminder in early March that department secretaries, not Musk, make personnel decisions.
During a Tesla conference call on April 22, he signaled that he would significantly reduce his government work to focus on his businesses.
Musk’s 130-day term as a special government official in the Trump administration was set to end around May 30. The administration has said that DOGE’s efforts to restructure and shrink the federal government will continue.
Trump and DOGE have managed to cut nearly 12%, or 260,000, of the 2.3 million federal civil servants, largely through threats of layoffs, stock buybacks and early retirement offers, according to a Reuters review of agency layoffs.
And after spending nearly USD 300 million last year supporting Trump and other Republican presidential candidates, he said earlier this month that he would significantly reduce his political spending.
“I think I’ve done enough,” Musk said at an economic forum in Qatar.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in April, Musk announced a reduction in his participation in the work of the US government in order to put his own business in order.
One of the reasons for this decision was the decline in Tesla’s profits in the first quarter.
And recently, Politico noted that the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has almost completely disappeared from the public space. US President Donald Trump and American officials have stopped mentioning him.
Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX conducted another unsuccessful launch of the Starship rocket – the rocket launched from the Starbase site in Texas on the evening of May 27, but have exploded over the Indian Ocean less than an hour later.
