SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Nehamas, Theodore Schleifer and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington: As Elon Musk sought to reassure Wall Street analysts this week that he would soon scale back his work with the federal government, the strain of his situation was audible in his voice.
The world’s richest man said he would continue arguing that the Trump administration should lower tariffs it had imposed on countries across the world. But he acknowledged in a subdued voice that whether US President Donald Trump “will listen to my advice is up to him”.
He was not quite chastened, but it was a different Musk than a couple of months ago, when the billionaire, at the peak of his power, brandished a chainsaw on stage at a pro-Trump conference to dramatise his role as a government slasher.
It was a different Elon Musk who brandished a chainsaw on stage at a pro-Trump conference a couple of months ago to dramatise his role as a government slasher.Credit: AP
Back then, Musk was inarguably a force in Washington, driving radical change across the government. To the president, he was a genius; to Democrats, he was Trump’s “unelected co-president”; to several cabinet secretaries, he was a menace; and to GOP lawmakers, he was the source of anguished calls from constituents whose services and jobs were threatened by cuts from his Department of Government Efficiency.
As Musk moves to spend less time in Washington, it is unclear whether his audacious plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy will have lasting power. The endeavour has left an immense imprint on the government, and Musk has told associates that he believes he has put in place the structure to make DOGE a success. But he has still not come close to cutting the $US1 trillion ($1.6 trillion) he vowed to find in waste, fraud and abuse.
Trump has constrained some of Musk’s influence over the past two months, telling cabinet secretaries that they were in charge of their own agencies. But the president also told the secretaries to work with Musk and DOGE to cut spending. At the same time, Musk has fought publicly and privately against the president’s steep tariffs that have threatened the manufacturing and profits of Tesla, his car company.
Musk has told friends that he has been frustrated by the encounters he has had with Trump’s trade advisers, according to a person briefed on the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The billionaire has tried to work behind the scenes to persuade Trump to abandon his draconian protectionist posture, according to two people with knowledge of their conversations.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for Musk declined to comment. On Wednesday, Trump said the billionaire “was a tremendous help, both in the campaign and in what he’s done with DOGE”.
“He was always at this time going to ease out,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.
Shaun Maguire, one of Musk’s closest friends and an adviser to DOGE officials, said that he was confident the endeavour would thrive without Musk’s full-time involvement. He compared DOGE to a Falcon 9 rocket – an initial thrust of energy powers the rocket even after it has separated from its engines.
“At this point, a rocket is only a couple hundred kilometres from earth, but it has escaped its gravity well and can travel far into the solar system,” Maguire said. “DOGE has escaped D.C.’s gravity well.”
Maguire, who was involved in interviews for Pentagon appointments during the presidential transition, said he believed that “history will judge DOGE very favourably, well beyond what is appreciated today.”
Musk has placed DOGE allies across the federal government, seeking to dismantle some agencies, including the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The New York Times has identified more than 60 employees hired to work for Musk’s effort, although some have since left the federal government. Many have worked with the billionaire in the private sector, including at least 20 who have ties to Musk’s companies. DOGE is led by Steve Davis, Musk’s top adviser and enforcer.
Although Musk’s aides have pushed for staff reductions and have cancelled contracts, some of the group’s most contentious work has been harnessing the federal government’s vast trove of personal data, in part to help drive Trump’s deportation policies.
DOGE staff members have overridden the objections of career civil servants at the Social Security Administration and the IRS to access closely held data about immigrants. Inside a Social Security database, Musk’s team put into place a system to list living immigrants they claimed were criminals as dead, to cut them off from financial services and force them to leave the country.
All told, DOGE has tried to gain entry to more than 80 data systems across at least 10 federal agencies, the Times found. Those data sets include personal information about federal workers; detailed financial data about federal procurement and spending; and intimate personal details about the American public.
Some of Trump’s advisers have watched anxiously as Musk has taken risky political swings at agencies that tens of millions of Americans rely on.
At the Social Security Administration, rushed policy changes have led to panicked beneficiaries overwhelming field offices. And a return-to-office policy and layoffs of probationary employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs have imperilled the agency’s mental health care program and threatened its ability to conduct medical research.
Musk came into the Trump administration claiming he would find governmental cost savings so large that they sounded impossible to budget experts.
In February, the group posted an online “wall of receipts” that detailed the savings from thousands of cancelled grants, contracts and office leases. But that site included claims that confused “billion” with “million”, double- or triple-counted the same cancellations and even took credit for cancelling programs that ended when George W. Bush was president.
This month, at a cabinet meeting, Musk said he had so far cut $US150 billion from next year’s federal budget – far less than the $US1 trillion he claimed he would extract.
DOGE has triggered sharp cuts to the federal workforce and the budgets of some agencies. But it is difficult to gauge exactly how much it has saved, because DOGE’s public claims have been riddled with errors and guesswork that inflated its success.
Musk’s slashing of the government has been politically costly, but he remains in good standing with the president, according to people familiar with Trump’s views.
While some of Trump’s close aides and advisers have argued with Musk, the president still praises him at nearly every opportunity, and still invites him to hang out at his clubs and to bring along his children.
Trump has told advisers that Musk put it all on the line for him. And he feels bad about what he calls left-wing “lunatics” attacking Tesla dealerships to protest Musk’s role in the Trump administration. Trump also respects the power of Musk’s social media platform, X, even as the president retains a commercial interest in Truth Social, his own platform.
In private, Trump has occasionally indicated to associates that it might be time for Musk to move on and spend more time with his companies. But the president is unlikely to ever pressure Musk to leave, or do anything deliberate to alienate him. He remains grateful for the hundreds of millions of dollars that Musk spent to elect him in 2024, and mindful of the additional $US100 million that Musk has pledged to Trump’s political operation, the associates note.
On Tuesday, Musk told analysts that he planned to dial back his government work to “a day or two per week” to turn his attention back to his companies. Administration officials with knowledge of Musk’s schedule said that they had already noticed he had reduced the amount of time he spends in Washington.
By dialling back the number of days he spends working for the White House, Musk can also potentially stretch out the 130 days he is allotted as a “special government employee”.
