My time comes to an end: Elon Musk exits Donald Trump government

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, May 29, 2025: Space and technology billionaire Elon Musk announced that his term as the chief of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has come to an end, thanking US President for the "opportunity to reduce wasteful spending".

Musk said that the DOGE mission will strengthen over time to become a "way of life" in the government.

His departure comes a day after Musk’s first ever criticism of Trump, where he said the President’s signature "big, beautiful" spending bill increases budget deficit and undermines the DOGE team’s work. "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.

Musk was the largest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign, featured in his pre-poll outings and then remained firmly by his side as the Republican assumed office. Trump, on his part, praised Musk in his victory speech, beaming as he said "a star is born".

As the DOGE department started work at a feverish pace, Musk went looking for "super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries" willing to work over 80 hours a week on unglamorous cost-cutting tasks. Tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were downsized or shut down, even as the Tesla chief butted heads with other senior Trump officials.

But by late April, Musk started pulling back after interviews where he said DOGE had become a "whipping boy" for dissatisfaction with the administration. He also admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE.

A US District judge has also ruled that Musk will have to face a lawsuit over wielding illegal power as DOGE head, among a slew of cases he and DOGE have been facing seeking to block their access to agency systems and records that contain vast troves of Americans’ financial and personal information.

His focus also shifted to his businesses, with Tesla dealerships getting targeted by arsonists and its share prices dropping, and SpaceX suffering setbacks with mission failures. The latest was on Wednesday when the Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean during its ninth test flight. The two-hour-long Saturday outage of social media platform X led the South African-born businessman to post, "As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made."