Elon Musk is bidding farewell to his ‘Government Gig’!The Tesla CEO, who took the lead at the Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump 2.0 Administration, has announced that his ‘scheduled time’ has come to an end.
What did Musk say?
On May 28, Musk announced via X, that his time leading President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting task force has come “to an end”.He wrote on X, “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.”He concluded his post, saying, “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”Musk has helped lead the DOGE since its inception this year. As it is well-known now, he was designated as a “special government employee” – which allows him to work a government job for 130 days each year. Counting from Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, he was supposed to hit that limit towards the end of May.Musk thanked Trump for the role in a post on X and said he believed the cost-cutting agency would become a “way of life throughout government”.
Musk’s “offboarding” as a special government employee would reportedly begin on Wednesday night.Notably, Musk’s exit comes after he criticised Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill, which includes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a pledge to increase defence spending.
The internet reacts:
As Musk has announced his departure from the DOGE, the social media, quite expectedly, has some thoughts. While most of the internet users wished the SpaceX billionaire best for his upcoming endeavors, one user took a reroute and asked Grok to summarize Musk’s achievements while he was at DOGE.Now, Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, based on a large language model (LLM) of the same name, and was launched in November 2023 by Elon Musk himself. Grok is designed to be conversational and is known for its “sense of humor” and direct access to the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).Seems like Grok has used its sense of humor in this case as well, as the AI chatbot declared, “The true impact of DOGE remains debated amid ongoing scrutiny.”When asked what Musk’s achievements are at the DOGE, Grok replied, “As a Special Government Employee, Elon Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claiming $160 billion in savings by terminating wasteful contracts, like $255 million from 269 contracts, and modernizing IT systems, such as digitizing the OPM retirement process. DOGE also cleaned Social Security records and supported voter integrity measures.” Grok added, “However, these efforts face criticism for potential costs of $135 billion in lost productivity, legal challenges, and service disruptions. Concerns about Musk’s business conflicts and political motivations persist, with public opinion divided, as 54% view him unfavorably. ”Another user lauded Musk for his contributions to the United States of America, saying, “I honestly don’t know if we could’ve saved America if @ElonMusk hadn’t spent $40 billion to buy Twitter and rescue free speech.” This particular user’s take? “He absolutely deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”However, several users had other opinions.One of them asked, “What was achieved other than elon breaking things and leaving them broken” while another commented, “this has damaged your brand beyond anything you can imagine.”
