Amid a big swing-state election loss and sinking poll numbers, President Trump’s government efficiency adviser and sidekick Elon Musk was noticeably absent from the president’s high-profile White House event announcing across-the-board tariffs on most imports.
Top White House officials denied reports that he had overstayed his welcome and would soon be expelled from Mr. Trump’s administration.
Mr. Trump said Thursday that Mr. Musk “is doing a fantastic job.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called anonymous claims that Mr. Musk is stepping back from leading the Department of Government Efficiency “garbage” and posted on X that Mr. Musk will leave “when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”
Mr. Musk reposted Ms. Leavitt’s statement with his own message: “Yeah, fake news.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, in a Thursday morning Fox News interview, didn’t deny the Tesla CEO’s prominent role had an end date and said it was planned all along. Mr. Musk and the DOGE team predicted it would take “about six months” to reduce the size and cost of the government, Mr. Vance said.
Mr. Musk won’t disappear after DOGE wraps up.
“He’s still going to continue being an adviser,” Mr. Vance said.
The talk of Mr. Musk’s departure follows a critical loss for Republicans in the Supreme Court election Tuesday in Wisconsin, a swing state Mr. Trump won in November by 29,000 votes.
Mr. Musk campaigned in the state ahead of the vote for conservative Judge Brad Schimel, hosting a packed campaign rally where he donned a cheesehead hat and offered million-dollar checks to voters.
Yet Judge Susan Crawford, a liberal, easily defeated Judge Schimel.
Her victory maintains the state Supreme Court’s Democratic majority, enabling it to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional districts to make it easier for Democrats to pick up two Republican-held House seats in 2026.
Some view Wisconsin’s election results as a warning sign to the Republican Party that Mr. Musk and DOGE are inflaming the left and leaving some Republicans disillusioned with the Trump administration. Democrats tied the loss directly to Mr. Musk and said they welcomed him dragging down Republican races.
“Politically, Elon Musk has been a complete disaster for Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said.
Mr. Musk, once a hero to the left for advancing the electric car, has become arguably the most polarizing figure in the Trump administration.
Liberal Democrats who oppose his DOGE team’s governmentwide job cuts and spending reductions compare the tech billionaire to a Nazi. Anti-Musk activists have firebombed Tesla dealerships and vandalized Cybertrucks.
House and Senate Democrats have made Mr. Musk a punching bag for anti-Trump jabs. They warn that DOGE cuts could result in reduced Social Security benefits, which Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump deny. Democrats this week launched a “Social Security war room,” which they say is needed to “fight back” against Mr. Musk’s cuts to the agency.
Mr. Musk has been Mr. Trump’s most prominent adviser. He has frequently appeared in the Oval Office with his young son in tow and traveled with him on the presidential helicopter to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
Mr. Musk said his mission is to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in what he planned would be a 130-day tenure as the head of DOGE.
He said he could finish the job by the end of May.
“The government is not efficient, and there is a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services,” he told Fox News last week.
Although Mr. Musk has uncovered billions of dollars in waste and fraud, polls show Americans are divided on DOGE’s mission. An NBC News survey conducted in mid-March found that 40% “strongly believed” DOGE is a good idea, while another 37% viewed it strongly as a bad idea.
A Quinnipiac poll released March 13 found 60% of voters do not approve of the way DOGE is cutting back the federal workforce, among them 68% of independents and 16% of Republicans.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the sole Republican to vote on a Democratic bill to defund DOGE, said Mr. Musk “certainly has been present in many, many, many, many ways” in the Trump administration.
Ms. Murkowski said that perhaps his work slashing government spending was done. She compared him to the character Mary Poppins, a nanny who flew out of the Banks family home with her umbrella when the wind shifted.
“Maybe the wind has changed” for Mr. Musk, she said.
Mr. Musk has been viewed as wielding a chain saw over the federal government. He waved one on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, a prop handed to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, who slashed his own government’s spending.
Since then, Mr. Musk and a team of outsiders have slashed billions of dollars in spending and reduced the federal workforce by thousands of jobs that his team deemed duplicative or wasteful.
The DOGE team reports it has cut $130 billion in spending so far and reduced the federal workforce by thousands of jobs.
On Tuesday, roughly 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department got pink slips in a mass firing that eliminated entire divisions and cut the department’s workforce by 25%. The Education Department will cut its workforce in half, eliminating about 2,000 jobs, and DOGE has recommended slashing 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs. More job cuts are expected at the Pentagon and other departments and agencies.
Overall, Mr. Musk said last week, the job reductions account for a fraction of 1% of the workforce.
Mr. Trump hasn’t uttered a word of criticism of Mr. Musk. The president purchased a Tesla Model S last month amid the left-wing backlash against the automaker and called Mr. Musk “a patriot.”
Mr. Trump said Thursday that Mr. Musk would remain in his position leading DOGE for at least “a few months” but would eventually have to return to his business ventures. After that, Mr. Trump said, DOGE would continue because it is finding tremendous waste in government spending. Mr. Trump said some DOGE staffers could end up in permanent government positions.
• Seth McLaughlin and Lindsey McPherson contributed to this report.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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