Elon Musk said Wednesday that he’s in the process of stepping back from his nearly 24/7 role with the Department of Government Efficiency to focus on his businesses.
“Now we’re getting more of a rhythm,” Musk told reporters at the White House on Wednesday evening. “And so the amount of time that it’s necessary for me to spend here is much less, and I can return to primarily running my companies, which do need me.”
Musk’s Tesla company this month reported a sizable drop in first-quarter profit and revenue.
Musk said that following an “intense” first three months of President Donald Trump’s administration — when he occasionally slept over at the White House at Trump’s invitation — he now expects to work on DOGE projects only one or two days a week and to be present in Washington every other week.
The shift will be a significant change. Musk has been a constant presence around the White House, even though he had a temporary role. He and his team have had extraordinary power over federal departments, at times butting heads with the Cabinet members who are actually in charge. And he has been a lightning rod for Trump’s critics, who are using him as a bogeyman in elections.
He said he was confident DOGE can continue without his direct daily involvement, but he repeatedly declined to say who would lead it in his stead.
“It’s a way of life, like Buddhism,” Musk said. “You wouldn’t ask who would lead Buddhism.”
Musk told reporters he intends to keep the “comically tiny office” he was assigned on the top floor of the West Wing, where, he acknowledged, he occasionally played the video games Diablo and Path of Exile on a large monitor he had hooked up to his computer.
Musk, who is known to be a couch-surfer when he is traveling, said Trump, whom he described as a “good friend,” would, on occasion, invite him to stay over in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom, particularly when he was returning late from travel.
“He’ll actually call late at night and say, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you get some ice cream from the kitchen,’” Musk said, adding with a laugh, “Don’t tell RFK.”
Musk and several of his top lieutenants outlined what they see as DOGE’s successes through its first 100 days and sought to push back against some of the criticism of the organization. They claimed they have fewer than 100 staffers, some of whom will stay on, others who won’t. Musk labeled it “basically a volunteer organization.”
The DOGE team claims to have saved the federal government $160 billion so far, arguing that “but for the actions of DOGE,” government spending would be that much higher in fiscal year 2026 — a figure all but impossible to fact-check.
DOGE’s reporting on its work has been riddled with errors and misleading claims. Its savings figure also doesn’t take into account the expenses associated with its work, including legal fees, salaries and money spent on carrying out some of the massive changes.
Asked about his initial claims that DOGE could cut at least $1 trillion in spending, Musk called that target still “possible” but said there is “a long road to go.”
“How much pain is, you know, the Cabinet and is Congress going to be willing to take?” he asked. “Because this is, it can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
Pressed about his repeated claims of fraud in government payment programs, including Social Security and Small Business Administration loans, Musk argued that it would be impossible for the Justice Department to prosecute all the instances of fraud — including “fraud rings” that DOGE said it has discovered — and that his team is largely focused on closing the technological loopholes it insists are exploited by criminals. That includes relatively simple fixes, like adding a “birth date” field to the SBA loan application page.
While fraud does exist in programs like Social Security, Musk and DOGE have also falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of entitlements as part of a Democratic scheme for votes.
“The first thing you want to do is at least stop the fraud and then thereafter make sure at least some number above zero of the fraudsters are prosecuted,” Musk said.
Antonio Gracias, a longtime Musk adviser and friend also working with DOGE, told reporters that DOGE has referred 57 cases of voter fraud to the Justice Department.
Gracias said those people were “resident aliens who were registered to vote and may or may not have voted in elections.”
“We’re not sure,” he added. “We referred the cases.”
Asked about the technical support Musk and DOGE have provided to the federal government, Musk pointed to the overhaul of the country’s air traffic control systems, which is still a work in progress, as well as an upgrade to the White House’s own internet, provided by Starlink, a Musk-owned company.
