Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that he would be stepping down from his role in the U.S. government’s cost-cutting initiative, marking a notable shift away from his earlier alignment with President Donald Trump. The decision reportedly stemmed from disagreements with the administration’s latest spending bill.
In a statement posted on his platform, X, Musk noted that his designated tenure as a Special Government Employee had concluded and expressed gratitude to President Trump for the opportunity to contribute to efforts aimed at reducing inefficiencies and curbing wasteful spending.
Musk also reaffirmed his support for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump-era initiative focused on slashing federal expenditures, suggesting that its mission would continue to gain traction as a guiding principle in governance.
However, he voiced concerns that Trump’s new spending bill undermined the goals of the DOGE initiative and threatened to reverse progress made in minimizing federal waste. Under DOGE, significant reductions to federal jobs were reportedly implemented in an effort to streamline bureaucracy.
Speaking with CBS News, Musk criticized the bill, stating that it contradicted the very objectives he had worked toward. He remarked that it widened the deficit rather than narrowing it and dealt a blow to DOGE’s core principles.
Musk, who had once been a regular presence alongside President Trump, had reportedly begun refocusing on Tesla and SpaceX in recent months. He also expressed frustration over DOGE becoming, in his view, a scapegoat for broader dissatisfaction with the administration’s policies.
Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.
“A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.
The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.
“The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.
Read also: Elon Musk Holds Meeting With China’s No 2 Official In Beijing
All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.
Elon Musk’s recent comments have highlighted an increasingly public rift between himself and President Donald Trump—despite having served as the largest donor to Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign. Once regarded as a close ally, Musk’s resignation from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has drawn attention to growing tensions between the tech mogul and the administration he once enthusiastically supported.
Musk, who was originally selected by Trump to head the federal cost-cutting task force, reportedly approached the role with characteristic intensity. However, by late April, he had begun signaling his intent to step back, citing the mounting demands of his corporate responsibilities at Tesla and SpaceX.
In remarks to The Washington Post, Musk voiced irritation over the backlash surrounding DOGE, which he described as increasingly scapegoated for unrelated issues across government. According to him, the initiative—run by a compact team of technocrats based in the White House—had unfairly become “the whipping boy for everything.”
He lamented that DOGE was routinely blamed for mishaps that bore no relation to its mandate, recounting these frustrations during an interview from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, shortly before a scheduled rocket launch.
While Musk pointed to entrenched bureaucratic resistance as the primary obstacle to DOGE’s effectiveness, political insiders and policy analysts have offered a more nuanced view. They suggest that Musk’s often combative management style and limited familiarity with Washington’s political intricacies also contributed significantly to the initiative’s struggles.