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Elon Musk is no longer working from the White House, Donald Trump’s chief of staff has revealed.
The president’s so-called First Buddy has been a looming presence during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. But earlier this month the Tesla CEO said he would be spending more time working on his troubled car company.
Now Susie Wiles has said that Musk is “not as present as he was” – physically at least.
“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” Wiles told The New York Post in an interview.
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Musk, who poured billions of dollars into Trump’s presidential campaign, “hasn’t been here physically, but it really doesn’t matter much,” she added.
Wiles insisted that his DOGE team “aren’t going anywhere” as they plow on with spending-cut efforts in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the West Wing.
“He’s not out of it altogether. He’s just not physically present as much as he was,” she stressed.
“The people that are doing this work are here doing good things and paying attention to the details.
“He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it. And his people are definitely not.”
Musk is officially due to step down from his DOGE role in May.
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The Tesla billionaire has been operating for the White House as an “unpaid special government employee” when he created the Department of Government Efficiency, which is technically a non-official government department. This means he is not allowed to work for more than 130 days in a year for the government, as the BBC reported.
According to The Washington Post, the X billionaire was becoming “tired” of politics and what he deemed a litany of attacks on him from the left.
During his tenure at Trump’s side, Musk has not been shy of bizarre publicity stunts. In February he brandished a chainsaw – handed to him by Argentinian President, Javier Milei – at a rally and screamed “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy”.
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But his political role has not come without cost. Tesla has suffered a spate of arson attacks across the globe, with protests in various cities rallying against his views.
On April 22 just after Tesla’s stock price closed at $237.97, Tesla revealed that its first-quarter earnings had dropped by 71 per cent from its corresponding value a year before.
So far DOGE has axed at least 58,486 jobs, and nearly 150,000 more are expected, according to analysis from the New York Times. It noted that some of the employees who had been fired had been temporarily reinstated following court orders.
