On Wednesday evening, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who helped President Donald Trump develop the Department of Government Efficiency, tackled rumors and propaganda being pushed by left-leaning news outlets. Many networks and publications have been spinning Musk’s departure as the leader of DOGE as the result of a feud with the president.
The mainstream media developed this narrative after Musk slammed the tax and spending package being hailed by Trump, saying, “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.”
However, there was a rule created at the establishment of DOGE that special government employees, like Musk, would only serve 130 days. The SpaceX CEO began heading up DOGE on January 20, 2025. His 130 days of service would be up this Friday, May 30.
Musk has also stated that he wants to return to focusing on his business ventures.
“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 said in a social media post published on X, which is one of the business ventures he owns. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
DOGE claims it has now saved American taxpayers a whopping $175 billion through using a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
In an interview published earlier in the week by Ars Technica, Musk said, “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics, it’s less than people would think, because the media is going to over-represent any political stuff, because political bones of contention get a lot of traction in the media. It’s not like I left the companies. 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.”
Musk played a significant role in the 2024 presidential election. After purchasing X, formerly known as Twitter, he took it in a more open, free speech-oriented direction. This allowed right-wing voters and activists to share information and ideas more openly in what has now become the public square of our time.
The SAIS Review of International Affairs said, “According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, over half of U.S. adults (54%) consume news from social media … X stood out for having the most balanced political affiliation distribution, with 48% of its users leaning Republican and 47% Democratic. Moreover, when it comes to politics X stands out with 59% of X users[10] following politics or political issues on the platform.”
The tech guru was also the largest individual donor to the president’s campaign, donating over $250 million through a political action committee. He also gave Trump his official endorsement following the attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last summer.
