Elon Musk Thanks Trump as He Officially Signs Off as Head of DOGE

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Elon Musk’s brief and defining stint in President Donald Trump’s government has come to an end, with the billionaire tech mogul officially announcing his departure on Wednesday.

In a statement posted to X, Musk confirmed the end of his agreed 130-day tenure as a Special Government Employee spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which concludes Friday.

“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 wrote. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

Musk’s parting message came just 24 hours after he publicly criticized Trump’s headline legislative package – dubbed by the president as his “Big Beautiful Bill” – for failing to live up to its name.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk told CBS. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”

The legislation includes a raft of tax cuts and increased immigration enforcement measures, but Musk warned it was “a massive spending bill” that undermines the very goals he was tasked with promoting at DOGE and, in comment to The Washington Post on the same day, decried that his initiative had become the administration’s “whipping boy.”

Musk admitted to the outlet that he had underestimated Washington’s inertia: “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. It sure is an uphill battle.”