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Amid a big swing-state election loss and sinking poll numbers, President Trump’s government efficiency adviser and sidekick Elon Musk was nowhere to be seen at the president’s big White House event announcing across-the-board tariffs on most foreign imports.
Mr. Musk was noticeably absent from the high-profile event as top White House officials denied reports he has overstayed his welcome and will soon be expelled from Mr. Trump’s administration.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called anonymous claims that Mr. Musk is stepping back from his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency “garbage,” posting on X that Mr. Musk will stick to his plan to leave the role “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 there’s an end date for the Tesla CEO’s prominent role, 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 Tuesday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, a swing state Mr. Trump won in 2024 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 beat Judge Schimel.
Her victory maintains the state Supreme Court’s Democrat majority, enabling it to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional districts to make it easier for Democrats to pick up two GOP-held House seats in 2026.
Some view Wisconsin’s election results as a warning sign to the GOP that Mr. Musk and DOGE are inflaming the left and leaving some Republicans disillusioned with the Trump administration.
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 government-wide job cuts and spending reductions compare the tech billionaire to a Nazi, while anti-Musk activists have firebombed Tesla dealerships and vandalized Cybertrucks.
House and Senate Democrats are warning that DOGE cuts could result in reduced Social Security benefits, which Mr. Musk denies.
Mr. Musk has been the most prominent advisor to Mr. Trump, appearing frequently in the Oval Office with his young son in tow, and traveling 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
While Mr. Musk has uncovered billions in fraud in waste, polls show Americans are divided on DOGE’s mission. An NBC News survey conducted in mid-March found 40% “strongly believed” DOGE is a good idea. 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.
Mr. Musk has been viewed as literally wielding a chainsaw 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 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.
Roughly 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department got pink slips on Wednesday 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.
Mr. Trump hasn’t uttered a word of criticism of Mr. Musk. The president purchased a Cybertruck last month amid the left-wing backlash against Tesla, and called Mr. Musk “a patriot.”
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