Elon Musk to ‘step back’ from advising Donald Trump
The Tesla billionaire will return to his businesses in the coming weeks, although the US president says he is satisfied with Musk’s work cutting government costs.
Elon Musk is preparing to step back from his role as a senior White House aide, President Trump is said to have told his inner circle.
Trump said he remained satisfied with Musk’s vast programme of government cuts, but it had been agreed that Musk would soon return to his businesses, Politico reported.
The move followed weeks of concern among White House insiders that Musk, 53, had begun to overstep his remit as a government adviser.
Only a month ago White House officials and allies were predicting that Musk was “here to stay” and that the president would find a way around the 130-day limit for unelected advisers, a point Musk was due to reach in late May or early June.
One senior administration official quoted by Politico said Musk was likely to remain an informal adviser and would continue to be seen around the White House. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said of the report: “This ‘scoop’ is garbage. Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work … is complete.”
Musk’s role as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was classified as an unpaid special government employee, a status that temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. The status was created by Congress in 1962 for temporary hires to perform limited duties.
From wielding a chainsaw as he slashed the federal workforce to his son wiping snot on the president’s desk in the Oval Office, Musk’s reign has attracted significant media attention.
He has cultivated this publicity with constant online messaging, posting to his X platform memes and attacks on rivals at all times of the day and night. Many in the administration feared this might turn off voters, concerns that appeared to be confirmed on Tuesday night when a conservative judge backed by the tech mogul was trounced in a race for the Wisconsin supreme court.
From the moment Trump’s victory was confirmed in November, the billionaire became a near-constant presence. He moved into a lavish villa on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, sat in on phone calls with world leaders and, to the growing frustration of Trump’s transition team, even advised on cabinet appointments.
“People around Trump were very, very annoyed at his presence,” one insider said. “Does he have to have a say on everything? It was definitely irksome.”
In government, Musk set up office in the White House while staff at Doge swept through Washington. One government agency after another has been occupied and dismantled by Musk’s team, while thousands of civil servants have been fired.
Musk’s wrecking-ball approach to government reform has caused some embarrassment for the administration. Critical workers responsible for responding to bird flu, the ebola virus and protecting America’s nuclear arsenal were rehired after U-turns on their firings.
Trump has proved surprisingly willing to share the limelight with the man who bankrolled his election victory last year and set aside a portion of his address to Congress to praise him. In a show of defiance to the growing backlash to Musk’s businesses, the president turned the White House into a Tesla dealership last month. Admiring a row of the electric cars, Trump vowed to buy a Tesla in an attempt to boost sales and insisted that Musk was “doing a fantastic job”.
In an earlier Fox News interview, Trump said: “You know, I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn’t do it.”
“I love the president,” Musk replied. “I think President Trump is a good man.”
Among many in Trump’s inner circle, however, Musk is seen as too unpredictable, operating outside the White House chain of command, picking fights and making unvetted announcements on X.
Anger spilled over at a cabinet meeting last month where Musk was reported to have clashed with Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary.
The result of the Wisconsin supreme court election on Tuesday crystallised concerns about him. Musk put himself at the centre of the Wisconsin campaign. Staking his wealth and his political capital on the result, he appeared at rallies and handed out million-dollar cheques to supporters. The response of voters in the battleground state was to choose the other candidate by 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
Musk responded to the defeat by staying up deep into Wednesday night, posting on X about left-wing corruption and mankind’s destiny to be replaced by robots, alongside memes of himself as Neo from The Matrix.
“It’s embarrassing,” one Republican lobbyist close to the administration said. “It doesn’t exactly promote family values when he’s on X talking about paying off his baby mama.”
Musk’s erratic media appearances have increased concern that he was playing to his online fanbase rather than serving the president.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, he appeared wearing mirrored sunglasses and a black Maga hat. Presented with a chainsaw by President Milei of Argentina, Musk waved it above his head, screaming: “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.”
His work for Trump has affected his businesses. Tesla dealerships have been attacked by protesters, even firebombed, amid a mounting boycott of the company. Tesla reported a 13 per cent drop in first quarter sales on Wednesday and the company’s stock has fallen by more than 30 per cent since January. Some investors have called on the board of directors to remove Musk as chief executive.
In an interview with Fox Business last month, Musk was asked how he was juggling his work with Doge and running his business empire. “With great difficulty,” he said.
Figures around the president insist that Musk will retain an advisory role, but Trump himself has been preparing for a parting of the ways. “At some point Elon’s going to want to go back to his company,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I think he’s amazing but I also think he’s got a big company to run … I’d keep him as long as I could keep him.”
The Times
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