As Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, put it, his role in steering President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has come “to an end.”
However, the president, in a social media post on Thursday night announcing that he and Musk would team up for a 1:30 p.m. ET White House news conference on Friday, teased that Musk would continue to help the Trump administration.
“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” he wrote.
Musk’s political impact on national politics and on next year’s midterm elections — for better or for worse — is far from over and is likely to live on well past his official departure from the Trump administration.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR DOGE AFTER ELON MUSK’S DEPARTURE
Trump, after winning back the White House in last November’s election, created DOGE with marching orders to overhaul and downsize the federal government. Trump named Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and Trump’s biggest political donor in the 2024 election, to steer the organization.
“Elon Musk made the most serious attempt at reducing the size and scope of government in modern political history. It was at times chaotic but impactful,” veteran GOP strategist Ryan Williams told Fox News.
Williams predicted that Musk’s “efforts will continue to linger as a political football, but also a guide for Republicans if they’re serious about limiting the growth of the federal government.”
After returning to the White House in January, Musk and DOGE quickly swept through federal agencies, rooting out what the new administration argued was billions in wasteful federal spending. Additionally, they took a meat cleaver to the federal workforce, resulting in a massive downsizing of employees.
Nothing symbolized Musk’s controversial moves more than his brandishing of a chainsaw during a February appearance at the MAGA-dominated Conservative Political Action Conference, where he touted “how easy” it was to “save billions of dollars sometimes in… an hour.”
The moves by DOGE grabbed tons of national attention and triggered a slew of lawsuits in response. Many of DOGE’s cuts in government staffing were stymied or reversed by federal court orders.
While DOGE was originally tasked with slashing $2 trillion from the federal government’s budget, the DOGE website earlier this week said that its efforts to date had led to roughly $175 billion in savings due to asset sales, contract cancellations, fraud payment cuts, in addition to other steps to eliminate costs.
MUSK CRITICISM OF TRUMP’S ‘BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’ FRUSTRATES SOME REPUBLICANS
Musk’s arrival in the nation’s capital came with a bang.
Thanks to a direct pipeline to the president and his powerful mouthpiece on the social media site X, Musk instantly and repeatedly made headlines with his provocative moves and the targeting of people he did not like, often to the chagrin of Trump administration officials and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Trump repeatedly praised Musk and DOGE’s efforts.
“The vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate you, and this whole room can say that very strongly; you have really been a tremendous help,” the president said during a Cabinet meeting four weeks ago, when Musk announced that he would be cutting back on his time spent with DOGE and the Trump administration.
However, behind the scenes, there was a lot less harmony.
“People got really sick of him really quickly,” a veteran Republican strategist with ties to the administration and Capitol Hill who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News.
“He was fun to begin with,” the strategist noted, before adding that “people inside and around the administration and people outside” were tired of Musk “by the end, when he’s sitting in a meeting wearing multiple hats on his head.”
Additionally, Musk’s recent criticism of Trump’s sweeping “big beautiful bill,” which passed a major congressional hurdle, did not help matters.
While a slew of public opinion polls, including national surveys from Fox News, indicated that Americans like the idea of downsizing the federal government, those same surveys highlighted that the public was far from thrilled with how Musk and DOGE carried out cuts to the federal bureaucracy.
WHITE HOUSE REVEALS NEXT STEPS FOR DOGE AFTER MUSK DEPARTURE
Musk, who spent nearly $300 million in support of Trump’s 2024 White House victory, quickly became a lightning rod in the handful of off-year and special elections held early this year.
Through aligned political groups, Musk dished out roughly $20 million in battleground Wisconsin’s high-profile state Supreme Court race, in support of Trump-backed judge Brad Schimel, the conservative-leaning candidate in the election.
Musk, in a controversial move, handed out $1 million checks at a rally in Green Bay two nights ahead of the election to two Wisconsin voters who had already cast ballots in the contest and had signed a petition to stop “activist judges.”
Musk, at the rally, donned a cheesehead hat — a foam wedge which resembles a chunk of cheese — that is traditionally worn by devout Green Bay Packers football fans in Wisconsin and across the country.
However, Schimel ended up losing by 10 points to the Democratic-aligned candidate in what was supposed to be a close contest. Musk ended up getting tagged with plenty of blame in a race that partially turned into a referendum on his efforts at DOGE.
TOP FIVE WILDEST MOMENTS OF MUSK’S DOGE TENURE
Democrats repeatedly made Musk the bogeyman in their messaging in Wisconsin’s election and in other contests, and they pledged to continue to target him heading into next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans will be defending their razor-thin House majority and their modest Senate majority.
“Top of mind for voters are the pocketbook issues. Democrats are going to win by highlighting the fact that Republicans are failing at lowering costs because they are too busy pushing tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations, while making the rest of us pay for them,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee national press secretary Viet Shelton told Fox News.
Shelton emphasized that “Elon is, and forever will be, an instantly-recognizable manifestation of the fact that House Republicans don’t work for the American people, they work for the billionaires.”
So, were Musk’s potential political risks to Republicans behind his departure from the nation’s capitol?
A GOP strategist close to GOP lawmakers, when asked if Musk’s welcome was wearing out among congressional Republicans, said “yes to a point.”
“But I think the larger question about whether Musk and DOGE are liabilities in the midterms, I would say emphatically no,” added the strategist, who asked for anonymity to speak more freely.
The strategist noted that GOP lawmakers “who have talked about waste, fraud, and abuse, and have talked about the savings generated by DOGE, they’ve done quite well. It’s the folks who don’t want to message on it and have not put Democrats on defense, who are tired of Musk.”
Additionally, veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman disagrees with the Democrats’ argument about Musk’s lasting impact on the campaign trail.
“I don’t think that in any way Elon Musk will be a factor one way or another in the year-plus that we have until Election Day 2026,” Gorman, a veteran of numerous presidential and statewide campaigns, told Fox News.
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