Elon Musk sounded extremely depressed on Tesla’s earnings call Tuesday after the EV company reported a 71% drop in profits last quarter. But one of the big headlines you’re seeing everywhere is this claim that Musk is leaving his role in President Donald Trump’s government as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And while it’s something Musk really did say, it’s worth taking a closer look at the exact words he used. Because just like everything else the billionaire oligarch promises, this claim needs to be treated with some healthy skepticism.
“The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place and working in the government, to get the financial house in order, is mostly done,” said Musk. “And I think… starting… probably in, next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly.”
That’s the news that everyone seemed to focus on. Musk is leaving DOGE and going to pay more attention to his several companies, including not just Tesla but X and SpaceX. Maybe Musk will even devote more time to his more neglected ventures like The Boring Company. But what got less attention was the line Musk followed up with.
“I’ll have to continued doing it for, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stopped does not come roaring back, which will do if it has the chance,” Musk continued.
Musk then elaborated on how much time he will actually be working on government issues, which he thinks will be a day or two during each week.
“So I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful,” said Musk. “But starting next month I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla and… now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done.”
Musk didn’t address the fact that he’s classified as a Special Government Employee (SGE), which allows him to sidestep financial and ethical disclosure rules, but has a hard deadline for when he’s supposed to exit from his role. SGEs can’t work for more than 130 days in any 365-day period. Musk has worked about 90 days as an SGE if we start counting from the inauguration on Jan. 20, but many people don’t seem to be realizing the tricks Musk could play. What if Musk suddenly decided to say that he wasn’t actually working for the government for half of those days or more? Who’s actually going to audit that?
Musk’s insistence that he’s only going to work one or two days a week feels like he’s showing his cards. Two days a week for 52 weeks in the year brings us to 104 days. And who’s to say what counts as “work” in Musk’s eyes? If he only devotes a few hours each day to government work but does that for seven days a week, does that count as seven days or does he need to accumulate 24 hours of work to count as a full day? You can see how these guys could play around with semantics—technically following the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law.
Musk frequently says he works 14-16 hours per day, but we know from his livestreams and reporting from Washington that he plays a lot of video games. Does his time playing video games count as work if he’s listening to a conference call or something while he does it? There are way too many loopholes to count at this point when you think of how Musk might add up his days as a Special Government Employee. The billionaire hasn’t actually declared how many days he thinks he’s “worked” for the government so far this year.
Officially, the Trump regime insists in court filings that Musk isn’t even an employee of DOGE, let alone its leader. It’s a bald-faced lie, given the fact that Trump and Musk never played along with that ridiculous idea. But it presumably insulates Musk from legal exposure for all the clearly illegal shit he’s been doing. For example, DOGE has completely abolished the U.S. Agency for International Development, which he has no authority to do. Only Congress can create or dispose of entire federal agencies.
The audio of Musk talking about his potential exit from the Trump regime is worth listening to, if only because the written word doesn’t properly communicate just how uncertain the billionaire sounds when he was talking on Tuesday. Musk pauses for long periods, sounding incredibly downtrodden and perhaps trying to collect his thoughts or choose his words carefully. We’ve clipped the relevant portion below and it’s weird to hear for yourself.
Tesla is clearly hurting as a direct consequence of Musk’s own choices and how people view his brands. The Tesla CEO has embraced Trump, had a direct role in destroying the government, and constantly shares his far-right views on X. But Musk doesn’t think a rejection of his ideas, and by extension Tesla, could possibly be an organic display of disgust by the public. The billionaire opened his earnings call by insisting that protesters at his dealerships were all paid by nefarious forces who were actually just upset that he’s cutting “waste” and “fraud” in the federal government.
“The real reason for the protests, the actual reason, is that… those receiving the waste and fraud wish to continue receiving it,” Musk said. “That is the real thing that’s going on here. Obviously.”
If we’re going to get into what’s “obvious,” it would seem much more apparent that Musk’s fascism is playing a role. This is the guy who made two Nazi-style salutes the day Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20. While he would later deny that’s what he was doing, the vast majority of people know what they saw.
Will Musk actually step away from DOGE? It’s entirely possible. Especially if the billionaire has outlived his usefulness to Trump. There have been countless reports from inside the White House that Musk has annoyed Trump, but so far they’ve needed each other to achieve their fascist goals. Musk has likely gained unique insights into federal contracts as he and his band of DOGE dipshits ransack government data. That kind of god-view access is pretty much unprecedented for a private contractor who relies heavily on government money. Musk is getting tremendous benefits from Trump, even if he has to endure some tariffs imposed by the president that harm his business in the short term.
And Trump needs Musk’s political machine to keep members of Congress in line. Musk helped get Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed by throwing his money and influence around after there were signs Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa wouldn’t help get Hegseth over the finish line. Musk helped fund ads that called Hegseth a “patriot” who was a victim of the “deep state,” and urged people to call their senators. It successfully got Ernst to play ball, even if Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine all voted against Hegseth, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie 50-50 vote.
The long and the short of it: We’ll believe Musk is actually leaving government when we see it. Trump and Musk both say a lot of things that don’t turn out to be true. Tesla didn’t respond to an email Wednesday asking for more details about Musk’s plan to supposedly step away from DOGE. But that’s not a surprise, given the fact that the company dissolved its media relations department in 2020. Gizmodo will update this post if, by some miracle, we hear back.
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