A black eye and a gold key: Musk’s subdued farewell from Trump’s White House

Washington: If Elon Musk’s headline-grabbing stint in the Trump administration straddled ecstatic highs and horrific lows, his farewell was more like a Buddhist on Valium.

Cameras were invited into the Oval Office to watch US President Donald Trump deliver lengthy remarks praising Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting razor gang he led during his 130-day tenure as a special government employee.

US President Donald Trump presents billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk with a “golden key to the White House” as he leaves the administration.Credit: AP

“He does love our country, I know that very much,” Trump said of the world’s richest man, and presented him with a golden key to the White House. “He’s all about the USA. Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude.”

Musk cut a dark figure in a black suit, black T-shirt bearing the words “The Dogefather” and a signature black cap, this one marked with “DOGE”. He also sported a slight bruise on his right eye, apparently the result of a play-fight with his young son, X.

Trump said Musk had endured “outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks” in the line of duty, something Musk himself has lamented in recent weeks as he stepped back from his constant presence at the White House in favour of his companies Tesla and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, a sanguine Musk exhibited little of the outrage about alleged corruption and waste by public servants that characterised his early days at DOGE, and often sparked furious, middle-of-the-night rants on his social media platform, also named X.

Musk sports a bruised eye which he said resulted from a play-fight with his young son, X.Credit: AP

Rather, he spoke about “the banal evil of bureaucracy”, and offered mundane examples of profligate spending, such as government departments retaining excess software licences with “zero people using them”.

“You can’t even blame the individuals,” Musk said, noting bureaucratic culture often prioritised minimising complaints. “I think it was an important thing, a necessary thing and I think it will have a good effect in the future,” he said of DOGE.

Musk predicted DOGE would be able to save $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) by the middle of next year, if empowered to by the president and Congress. “This is not the end of DOGE but really the beginning,” he said. “I liken it to a sort of Buddhism. It’s like a way of life.”

Even the reporters present for Musk’s low-energy exit were more interested in other topics when it came to asking questions.

Musk brushed aside the only spicy inquiry, which pertained to a New York Times report published just hours earlier alleging his use of drugs was significantly more extensive than previously known, including regular – sometimes daily – use of ketamine.

The paper claimed that around July last year, when he endorsed Trump for president, Musk told associates his ketamine use was causing bladder problems. People close to him worried about the drugs’ impact on his health and business ventures, the Times said.

In the Oval Office, Musk was dismissive. “The New York Times. Is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer prize for false reporting on the Russia-gate [scandal]? Is that the same organisation? I think it is … let’s move on,” he said, without explicitly denying the claims.

Trump is trying to get the Times and The Washington Post stripped of their awards for reports on alleged ties between the state of Russia and his 2016 election campaign.

But Musk has acknowledged his drug use in the past. In March last year, he told interviewer Don Lemon he had a prescription for ketamine to treat a “negative state of mind” that he likened to depression, and used only a small amount weekly or fortnightly.

Musk, who was once associated with the Democrats and progressive politics, indicated he now felt more at home on the conservative side and said he would remain a friend and adviser to the Republican president.

“The fundamental moral flaw of the left is empathy for the criminals but not empathy for the victims,” he said. There had also been “immense judicial overreach” in response to Trump, Musk said, and it was “undermining people’s faith in the legal system”.

In the past week, Musk has also criticised elements of the Trump agenda, including what Trump calls his “big, beautiful” tax bill that raises the debt ceiling and which the Tesla chief said was antithetical to the work of DOGE. He and Tesla also opposed the bill for reversing Joe Biden’s energy tax credits.

But all of that was overlooked for a fond farewell that saw Musk leave, not with the bang of a rocket blasting off, but the quiet whirr of an electric car trundling into the distance.

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