Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has departed his US department of government efficiency (DOGE), leaving politics and surrendering his waste chainsaw to concentrate on business.
He’s been under pressure from investors to spend more of his time on his electric vehicle company Tesla, rather than stalk the corridors of power in Washington, hacking away at federal spending waste.
“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 his social media platform X.
“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
He reportedly believes the federal bureaucracy situation is worse than he realised.
“I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least,” he told the Washington Post.
Musk is also disappointed at Trump's big spending legislation, whose tax provisions are titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This would increase the US deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
"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," Musk told CBS.
"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."
Musk, even when leaving Washington, is benefiting from Trump administration pressure on advertisers.
A US government entity is now investigating advertisers who pulled ad spend from Musk’s X, formerly Twitter.
Media Matters, a not-for-profit analysing conservative misinformation in the US media, is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to multiple reports.
The FTC, in a letter to Media Matters, demands documents relating to communication with a range of advertising bodies, including the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
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