Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., discusses Elon Musk’s exit from DOGE and the University of Florida’s new president on ‘The Bottom Line.’
President Donald Trump lauded Elon Musk in a Friday afternoon press conference as the billionaire businessman stepped back from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The president said Musk “has worked tirelessly, helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.”
Musk “willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks” while working at DOGE “because he does love our country,” Trump said, adding that Americans “owe him a great debt of gratitude” and thanking him “for his time as a special government employee.”
Elon Musk shows off his t-shirt reading “Tech Support” while speaking at the first cabinet meeting hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, DC, Feb. 26, 2025. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder / Reuters)
The press conference came as Musk’s tenure as a “special government employee” reached the maximum 130 days a year that people with that designation can work according to federal law.
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Trump used an executive order on his first day in office to officially create DOGE, with the billionaire heading up the endeavor to significantly pare back spending and boost efficiency within the government.
The executive order said the DOGE organization will operate until early July 2026.
DOGE has so far brought $175 billion in estimated savings from a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions,” according to its website.
Two days before the press conference, Musk wrote on his social media platform X, that he wanted to “thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending” as his “scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end.”
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets Elon Musk as he arrives to attend a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas (Brandon Bell/Getty Images / Getty Images)
During Friday’s press conference, Trump said he thinks Musk will be “going back and forth” rather than stepping away altogether.
“I have a feeling. It’s his baby, and I think he’s going to be doing a lot of things,” the president said. “But Elon’s service to America has been without comparison in modern history.”
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Trump said “almost all” of DOGE’s people “are staying,” adding that Americans are “going to see the results coming long into the future.”
Musk, standing beside the president’s desk in the Oval Office, said the end of his time as a “special government employee” was “not the end of DOGE but really the beginning.”
“My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end, it was a limited time thing,” he said. “But the DOGE team will only grow stronger over time, the DOGE influence will only grow stronger.”
The billionaire expressed confidence that America will see a $1 trillion of “waste and fraud reduction” over time.
FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16 (REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo / Reuters Photos)
Musk also said he will “continue to be visiting” the White House and “be a friend and advisor” to the president.
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In late April, Musk told Tesla analysts and investors that he would start “significantly” dialing back his work at DOGE but said he thought he would “continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the President would like me to do so and as long as it was useful.”
