Elon Musk stood next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, but the physical proximity belied a growing philosophical divide between two of the world's most powerful men, resulting in the tech mogul's abrupt announcement that he is departing Washington — without having achieved his goal of decimating the federal government.
"He came, he saw, he folded," Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser during Trump's first term who is influential with the working-class wing of Trump's MAGA base, said in a text exchange with NBC News.
Musk, who stood with his arms folded across his chest as he and Trump took questions, sported a bruise near his right eye — an unmistakable metaphor for his tumultuous government service — that he said he incurred while playing with his 5-year-old son, X.
Trump took a more charitable view of Musk's tenure during a sprawling news conference in which he also declined to rule out pardoning Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is on trial on charges of sex trafficking and other alleged crimes; said he dislikes "the concept" of former first lady Jill Biden being forced to testify before Congress about her husband's mental fitness; and predicted again that Iran is on the cusp of making a deal that would suspend its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame because he’s an incredible patriot," Trump said of Musk.
In a battle of plutocrats against populists, Bannon, a longtime advocate for reducing the size and scope of government, found Musk's methods and policy preferences to be sharply at odds with those of the MAGA movement. So, ultimately, did Musk, who broke with Trump repeatedly on agenda items as narrow as limiting visas for foreign workers and as broad as Trump's signature "big beautiful" budget bill — which Musk belittled for threatening to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said in an interview with CBS' "Sunday Morning," which will air this weekend.
The tech billionaire also disagreed with Trump’s imposition of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners last month, pointing to the trade relationship with Europe as one where he would like to see a “zero-tariff situation.“
But what Musk will most be remembered for in Washington is an approach to slashing government that critics described as haphazard, inhumane and counterproductive. His Department of Government Efficiency, a project conceived as he poured more than $250 million into electing Trump in 2024, shuttered government agencies, fired federal workers — some of whom had to be rehired — and canceled federal contracts.
In the end, despite all of the upheaval, Musk fell far short of his announced goal of saving $2 trillion. By his own agency's account — which has been found to contain errors that inflate the numbers — the figure stood at $175 billion Friday. An analysis by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which has been a vocal critic of DOGE, said that its actions have cost taxpayers $135 billion.
Trump and Musk both contended that DOGE will continue to wring savings by rooting out waste and fraud without the tech billionaire as its face.
"This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning," Musk said, vowing to reach the trillion-dollar mark in cuts by the middle of next year. At the same time he spoke of cutting government spending, Musk lauded Trump's remodeling of the Oval Office.
"I love the gold on the ceiling," he said.
Musk has argued that inertia throttled his efforts to reduce government spending — a conclusion that raises questions about whether he was naive about the challenge of the mission he undertook.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told The Washington Post this week. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
On Friday, he drew an implicit parallel between American government and the Nazi regime that committed a genocide, invoking the "banality of evil" that Hannah Arendt used to describe the atrocities in Germany.
“It’s the banal evil of bureaucracy,” Musk said of profligate spending.
House Republicans voted last week to approve budget legislation that would extend Trump’s tax cuts from his first term, which is estimated to add $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years and cancel health coverage for roughly 8.6 million people, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who represents a Silicon Valley district that contains the home bases of many of the nation's top technology firms, said the split between Trump and Musk is a sign that industry leaders are becoming colder to the president's agenda.
"Musk's disillusionment with the 'Big Beautiful Bill' exploding our deficit, the ban on foreign students like he once was, blanket tariffs, and war on universities reflects a growing disillusionment shared by a number of prominent tech leaders who are having second thoughts about Trump-Vance protectionism and isolationism," Khanna said.
In answer to a reporter’s question, Musk said that he will continue to counsel to Trump on an ad hoc basis.
“I expect to provide advice whenever the president would like advice,” he said.
“I hope so,” Trump replied.
But there are reasons for Musk to be eager to shift his focus back to the private sector.
His public approval and stock in his electric vehicle business, Tesla, have been hurt by his time as a special government employee in the Trump White House, even as critics worried that his access and power within the administration created opportunity for him to enrich himself through contracts for his SpaceX and Starlink companies. Trump even held an event at the White House in March to try to bolster Tesla.
NBC News reported that Musk’s monthslong stint as a special government employee tasked with slashing federal spending formally ended Wednesday evening. He has served the designated 130 days out of 365 in the year as a special government employee. But Trump has rejected the idea that their split is a permanent one.
Still, on the cusp of his departure, Musk was greeted with another reminder of his tough time in the spotlight. The New York Times published an article about his alleged past drug use (NBC News has not confirmed the Times’ reporting but Musk has acknowledged taking ketamine as a treatment for depression).
Asked about the story, Musk dodged.
“Let’s move on,” he said. And, after a nearly hourlong news conference, he did just that.
