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U.S. President Donald Trump's billionaire ally, Elon Musk, announced his departure from a U.S. government advisory role this week, citing concerns over rising federal spending and operational strains across his businesses.
The move comes as Musk faces heightened criticism over his divided focus, following a major service disruption on X last week, the social media platform he owns.
Musk’s exit marks a significant break with President Donald Trump, with whom he had closely aligned on plans to reduce government expenditures.
In a statement posted on X, Musk said, “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”
He added that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—an initiative associated with Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce—would “only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
In a televised interview, Musk criticized Trump’s sweeping “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which recently passed the House.
He argued that the measure, which promises both tax relief and spending cuts, would, in fact, expand the deficit and undermine DOGE’s mission. “A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both,” he said.
Musk’s decision to scale back his political involvement coincides with a two-hour global outage of X, formerly known as Twitter, on May 24. The outage triggered widespread service disruptions, as confirmed by Downdetector.
Musk acknowledged the issue in a post on X, admitting that “major operational improvements need to be made.” He noted that the platform’s failover redundancy—backup systems designed to maintain service during failures—“should have worked, but did not.”
He responded by stating that he would resume spending “24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” a reference to his earlier management style during crises, signaling his potential departure.
In recent months, Musk has divided his time between Washington and his companies—X, xAI (developer of the AI chatbot Grok), Tesla, and SpaceX.
However, following backlash over government downsizing measures and a decline in Tesla’s share price, Musk had already begun limiting his time in the capital to “one or two days a week.”
He has since announced a reduction in political spending, although he said he may still back future initiatives “if I see a reason.”
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