On Friday, President Trump held a farewell with Elon Musk in the Oval Office, as the billionaire is now focusing his attention on his business.
Musk, dressed in a black suit and with a noticeable bruise under his eye, stood next to the president during the joint press conference. The meeting was intended to show that Trump continues to support the billionaire entrepreneur.
During the event, the president presented Musk with a golden key and described him as a man who endured “bullets and arrows,” implying that public criticism of Musk was unfair. “He had to go through bullets and arrows, which is a shame,” Trump said.
In recent months, Tesla has faced protests, acts of vandalism, and a sharp decline in its stock value. Many of these issues followed Musk's increasing involvement with DOGE and efforts to cut costs.
By publicly supporting Musk, Trump aimed to show that he firmly stands behind the man who played a significant role in his own political comeback.
The relationship between Trump and Musk, however, has not always been smooth. At one point, Musk suggested to Trump not to run for office. In response, Trump even posted on social media in 2022 that he “could say: ‘Get on your knees and beg,’ and he would do it.”
Despite this difficult start, the two eventually found common ground. Elon Musk generously donated to Trump’s political campaign and praised him on social media. In turn, President Trump allowed Musk to participate in various federal agencies with little resistance.
In February, he even took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a chainsaw, saying that “sometimes it’s easy” to “save billions of dollars in an hour.” This performance attracted attention, but in practice, Musk's team did not get close to achieving the goal of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget.
Musk said that cutting expenses turned out to be much more difficult than he expected. And by Friday, he acknowledged that identifying and ensuring enormous savings was much harder than he anticipated.
Standing next to Trump, he described the task of reviewing government spending as “extremely labor-intensive and complex,” requiring a careful examination of countless items. “It’s mostly just a lot of hard work,” he said.
Despite Musk stepping back from his formal role in the company, both men insisted that the efforts would continue. Trump noted that Musk “set geniuses with engineering minds and incredibly talented people in computer technology” to keep working in multiple agencies.
“Elon is actually not leaving,” the president said. “He will come and go. I have a feeling this is his baby.”
Musk reiterated that the efforts to cut costs are far from over.
Musk promised that DOGE would eventually reach $1 trillion in cuts, although the DOGE website currently lists $175 billion in proposed cuts. “This is not the end of DOGE, but actually the beginning,” he said, comparing the efforts to a lifestyle, “like Buddhism.”
During the press conference, a reporter asked Musk about a recent report in The New York Times, which suggested that he had been using drugs more actively than previously known. Musk did not respond to the specific details of the report, instead criticizing the newspaper's credibility and saying, “Let’s move on.”
Another question concerned the bruise under Musk's eye. He explained that it was the result of playing with his 5-year-old son, X. “I said, ‘Come on, hit me in the face,’”
“And he did it.” His response elicited laughter and briefly relieved the tension in the room.
Towards the end of the session, Musk rejoined the discussion to criticize federal judges who upheld restrictions on the administration's power. He accused the judges of “massive judicial overreach that is unconstitutional.” “This has to stop,” he said. “This has gone too far.”
