BREAKING: Elon Musk Leaves DOGE
11:50 Share

It's tourney time. And with FanDuel's dog of the day, you can get a daily profit boost during the college conference championships to bet on any underdog. So get ready to celebrate some upsets. No one saw that coming. Except for me, baby.

21 plus and present in Arizona. Opt-in required. Minimum plus 100 odds required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including token expiration and max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342. At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our FlexPath learning format.

Thank you.

Please apply. The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift,

a new podcast from Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Etlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is part of the Stage Zero News Network. My name is Will Walden. I am your host. I want to tell you about Starshipshirts.com, Elon Musk-inspired merch, Starship-inspired merch, NASA-inspired merch for every person on the planet. Starshipshirts.com. Today's topic is Elon Musk leaving Doge.

We just got there, right? So why is Donald Trump suddenly treating Elon Musk more like a seasonal intern than the most powerful man in Washington? It's not about Elon Musk getting bored with the bureaucracy.

The Billionaire is going back to his normal ways. Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, etc. It's about whether the most disruptive figure in American tech history is finally becoming too volatile for the most disruptive president in modern history. What went wrong in this bromance?

And did Musk finally step on the wrong policy landmine and trip over Tesla? Now, according to three different individuals with direct knowledge of internal discussions, granted a nominee because it's still President Trump, it's Washington, they don't want to get in trouble. He's already told cabinet members and close advisors that Elon Musk will be stepping back from his quasi-government role in the coming weeks.

Not quite a resignation, though. He's just kind of stepping back. More like a strategic phase out. Musk, once described by allies as the administration's cheerleader-in-chief, is expected to shift into a supportive role rather than disappear entirely. This is a quiet divorce.

And it's been brewing for weeks, especially after Musk's latest political misfire. Last Tuesday, a conservative judge heavily backed by Musk lost a Wisconsin Supreme Court race by double digits. The debacle didn't just sting. It rang alarm bells for Republicans banking on Musk's influence to energize that base.

Instead, he energized the other side, the Democrats, that came out in full force and destroyed his side. Now, one month ago, Trump staffers insisted that Musk was in it for the long haul. The idea was that Trump might find a creative workaround for the 130-day time cap imposed on Musk's status as a special government employee. But that's solved.

The legally mandated expiration of that role looms large in late May or early June. Now, for the unfamiliar, special government employee is Washington's bureaucratic euphemism for a loophole, allowing Musk to temporarily sidestep conflict of interest laws while moonlighting as Trump's Mr. Fix-It-All.

Now that special status is expiring, and with it, Musk's front row seat to the U.S. government. Trump is said to have started prepping for this transition over a week before the Wisconsin election, even signaling the shift in a March 24th cabinet meeting.

The internal reasons are both simple and very complex. Musk supporters say he's done what he can, trimmed the fat from bloated agencies, but a growing group of Trump loyalists argue he's created more chaos than clarity.

Musk's shoot-from-the-hip approach has tripped up the Cabinet's communication flow, made Chief of Staff Suzy Weil's job a walking nightmare, and repeatedly blindsided departments with half-baked policy declarations posted on X. Now, his defenders argue that he's made an impact, especially with Doge, Trump's Frankenstein attempt to downsize the federal workforce.

But Musk's adversaries are quick to note that Doge's surprise mandates and unintended cuts, including the now infamous incident involving Ebola prevention funding, have become potential landmines. Now, even as Trump publicly praises Musk, calling him a patriot and a friend of mine during the same March cabinet meeting, others inside the White House see a man growing wary of Musk's unfiltered methods.

Now, Musk once emailed a mass demand to federal employees asking them to itemize their daily tasks. That cabinet had no idea what he was doing. They didn't know it was coming. And the strain intensified after Musk funneled millions into that doomed judicial campaign in Wisconsin. His opponents made the race about him.

And they won. Democrats fractured as they are united in their opposition to Musk's billionaire meddling, proving that his involvement is as likely to turn voters away as to win them over. A week before Wisconsin lost, Trump quietly began backing away from Musk. This included retracting

Representative Elise Stefanik's nomination for U.N. ambassador, a sign Trump is trying to protect his razor-thin White House majority heading into midterms. According to Trump campaign insiders, Trump is becoming less amused with Elon Musk, especially when they echo back directly to the president.

Now, when asked by Fox News whether he'd be ready to leave after his 130-day gig expires, Musk gave a classic mic drop. He said, I think we'll have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame. Okay, if he can get rid of a trillion dollars in 130 days, imagine what Doge could do over the course of Trump's four years in office.

I think they could find more money that they could get rid of, a trillion dollars within that timeframe. Maybe they could find more. I don't know. We'll see. But the White House spokesperson, Harrison Fields, tried to steady the narrative and said, "Elon has been instrumental in executing the president's agenda and will continue this good work until the president says otherwise."

The press secretary for Trump went a step further, calling reports of Musk's departure garbage, but still confirmed he's going to be gone when the doge work is complete. Now, no one is accusing Musk of sabotaging the administration intentionally. Even supporters say he has a frustrating inability to work within structured systems. He makes his own rules. I mean, he's

From the billionaire class. They just do whatever they want, right? The most charitable read though. They just said he's not built for team sports. Okay. Well, he has teams around him all the time. He's in charge of everything. He's the billionaire boss. So they do what he says. He doesn't play with anybody else. Now, as one senior ally put it though, they think he's a genius, but he's a one man wrecking ball.

a wrecking ball that's starting to swing wildly close to Trump. Among Musk's recent transgressions, though,

Torpedoing a year-end budget deal between Speaker Mike Johnson and Democrats without Trump's direction. Lawmakers assume Musk had Trump's blessing, throwing the entire GOP in disarray. Another gem came when Musk undermined a $500 billion AI partnership by lobbying insults at Sam Altman, the longtime rival and centerpiece of this deal. Now, in both cases, White House staff were left scrambling to control the damage.

And while Trump publicly stayed loyal, there were grumbles inside the West Wing. People wondered if Musk was becoming a net negative. Then there was Musk's cameo on Joe Rogan, where he casually dismissed Social Security as the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Now, Trump has vowed repeatedly to protect those benefits, though. Social Security. Now, the timing was atrocious. Now, Musk also...

took to X urging Trump to ignore court orders blocking parts of Doge, just as the administration was pledging constitutional compliance. So you can't have it both ways, Elon. And at some point, Trump aides stepped into Muslim. But even when Musk reins himself in, there's still whiplash. There's still lingering effects. Advisors say that Trump has started to realize that while Musk has been a useful lightning rod taking heat for the nastier parts of Trump's agenda, sparks are starting to catch fire.

Elon's taking a lot of bullets for Trump, a lot, and Trump knows it. But if it starts to rub off on him, that's when the honeymoon ends between Trump and Musk.

Now, Musk's peculiar proximity to Trump has long been a sore spot for other insiders and people that have climbed the ladder to get that close to Trump and nudged aside by Elon Musk because he has billions of dollars. And even before the 2024 election, critics within Trump's circle grumbled that Musk was practically living at Mar-a-Lago, seeking face time with the president like a kid desperate to meet Santa Claus. Now, many assume Musk wouldn't want to disrupt his own businesses by entering government,

But they were wrong. Instead, Musk became a fixture in the White House, given an office near the West Wing and unprecedented access to the president. Critics feared it gave Musk unchecked influence. For a time, it did. But Trump has shown growing skepticism. He grew a public line after...

It emerged that the Pentagon had planned to brief Musk on classified war scenarios involving China. Now, with Musk's business ties in the region, even the hint of a conflict of interest set off all the alarms. Now, you shouldn't show it to a businessman, even Elon Musk. And that's diplomatic code for we don't trust him with state secrets.

But Trump also had to do clean up after that fiasco and reportedly the president was pissed, not just at the leak, but that he wasn't warned about the Pentagon's intentions ahead of time. It was another sign Musk was operating outside official channels. He just does what he wants and asks for forgiveness later. Kind of like what they do in Silicon Valley. I worked there for years. I understand how it works. You just make stuff and if you break something, you ask for forgiveness.

the way it works, especially if you have as much money as Elon Musk does. Now, the slow motion unraveling reached a climax during a March 6th cabinet meeting. Trump made it clear, though, agency heads, not Elon Musk, were now in charge of budget cuts. That announcement wasn't just procedural. It was a power shift. Trump reasserted control, signaling that Musk's freewheeling influence was no longer untouchable. Still, at the following week's meetings,

Trump gave Musk a glowing send-off in front of the press. For all the behind-the-scenes tension, he remains publicly grateful for Musk's service, even if that gratitude comes with a farewell. But the facts spark louder than the flattery. Musk is exiting the daily operation of Trump's administration, not because he failed at streamlining bureaucracy, but because he failed at reading the political room.

Whether it was going rogue on budget deals, insulting AI partners, or sparking social security panic, Musk has revealed a basic incompatibility with the structure of government work. He's not malicious. He's just undisciplined in this type of work. He doesn't know how to do it. And in Donald Trump's world, undisciplined can only last so long before it becomes inconvenient.

Now, thank you so much for listening to the show today. If you could take a second and hit the follow button or the like button on whatever podcast platform that you're on right now, I'd greatly appreciate it. And my promise to you, if you do that, is that I'll continue this show for the next 10 years uninterrupted with no paywalls. That's all you need to do. Hit the subscribe or follow button on whatever podcast platform you're on right now. That's it for the day, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you in the next one.