CNN
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At what might have been his last Cabinet meeting for the foreseeable future, billionaire presidential adviser Elon Musk donned two baseball caps, one stacked atop the other. The first, emblazoned with the name of his government-slashing “DOGE” agency, was covered by a red and white “GULF OF AMERICA” hat, which he had plucked from the table in the room.
“He’s the only one who can do that and get away with it,” President Donald Trump joked, drawing hearty laughter from the leaders whose agencies Musk has cut.
“Well, Mr. President, you know, they say I wear a lot of hats,” Musk quipped.
The lighthearted mood appeared to disguise a tumultuous tenure for the Tesla leader turned “special government employee” tasked with making the government smaller and more efficient.
In the same room where he was now being applauded in a sort-of send off ceremony, Musk had privately clashed with other Cabinet secretaries over his cuts. His departure comes as he is well short of his initial goal to cut $2 trillion from federal government spending. (He said at the Cabinet meeting Wednesday that he’d cut around $160 billion — though even that figure is disputed.)
And his time in the administration has come at a personal cost. Tesla reported a 71% drop in net income last week — likely due to a combination of tariff issues and his controversial political role. The report prompted Musk to tell investors that he’s stepping away from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency to focus on the company. His dealerships and vehicles have also faced vandalism across the country.
“They do like to burn my cars, which is not great,” Musk said at the meeting Wednesday.
Whether and to what extent he will step away remains an open question. Trump told Musk at the meeting that he was “invited to stay as long as you want” before adding “at some point, I guess, he wants to get back home to his cars.”
Musk had been a fixture in the Oval Office or on Air Force One the administration’s first 100 days. He joined Trump for Thanksgiving dinner during his transition. It was not uncommon for him to board Marine One from the South Lawn behind Trump, and the president routinely praised him publicly.
Others in Trump’s orbit, though, were not as keen on what they saw as Musk’s intrusions on their authority. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Musk traded barbs during a private Cabinet meeting in March, with Musk accusing Rubio of failing to cut his staff and Rubio firing back that Musk was lying. Trump, after listening to the two argue, ultimately told Musk that the secretaries would be in charge of staffing decisions from now on and the billionaire would have more of an advisory role, The Times reported.
On Wednesday, Rubio offered some modest praise for Musk.
“Now, we went out and hired a consulting firm to help us organize ourselves. Luckily, they were free. They’re called the Department of Government Efficiency. And they helped us do a couple of things,” Rubio quipped.
More recently, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Musk shouted expletives at each other within earshot of fellow staffers at the White House, according to a person familiar with what transpired. The disagreement this time was over who should be the acting head of the IRS.
Trump had initially named whistleblower Gary Shapley acting commissioner of the agency, with Musk’s support, while Bessent out of the country. Days later, after Bessent intervened, the White House said Shapley would no longer serve in the role, instead giving it to Michael Faulkender, the deputy secretary of the Treasury.
Bessent, like Rubio, offered a positive assessment of Musk’s work on Wednesday: “Under the DOGE at Treasury and the IRS, cost, tech support, and efficiency have increased.”
For his part, Musk broadly complimented Trump’s Cabinet, saying he believed this administration could be the “greatest since the founding of the country.”
The White House did not respond to a question about whether Musk will continue to appear at Cabinet meetings. Chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with the New York Post that Musk is no longer regularly physically working from the White House. But, she added, that doesn’t mean Musk is abandoning his efforts at DOGE.
Trump indicated that DOGE would continue to save money beyond the $160 billion cited on Wednesday — with or without Musk.
“A lot of stuff is being worked on. That number could be doubled and even tripled. A lot of things are being worked on that we don’t count yet because it’s not quite there,” Trump said.
