Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that he will step down from his position in the US government, a role created to reduce federal spending, following his first major public disagreement with President Donald Trump over the administration’s flagship spending legislation.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on his social media platform, X.
“The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.
Musk, who previously stood alongside Trump as a close ally before redirecting his focus to SpaceX and Tesla, voiced concern that the President’s latest bill would only inflate the deficit, undermining the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has already overseen the dismissal of tens of thousands of federal employees.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired Tuesday night.
Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which passed the House last week and now heads to the Senate, aims to introduce sweeping tax relief and spending cuts, forming the backbone of his domestic agenda.
However, critics argue it would devastate health care and swell the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade.
“A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk remarked during the CBS interview, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday.
The White House responded to Musk’s comments, downplaying any rift over the new spending measures without mentioning him by name.
“The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stated on Musk’s platform, X, after Musk’s interview aired.
Miller clarified that cuts by DOGE would require a separate bill specifically targeting the federal bureaucracy, as dictated by Senate rules.
Despite the White House’s efforts to calm tensions, Musk’s statements mark a significant break from Trump, whom he supported as the largest donor to his 2024 re-election campaign.
