Elon Musk officially quits DOGE with a parting message for Trump after slamming his 'big, beautiful' bill

WASHINGTON, DC: Elon Musk is officially done with Washington, DC. The tech titan quit the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and made his White House exit just one day after publicly splitting with President Donald Trump.

While Musk may have fired some shots at Trump’s massive spending bill, he still made sure to lay on the pleasantries as he walked out the door. 

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he posted to X on Wednesday night, May 28. “The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

His departure wasn’t exactly a surprise. Musk, once dubbed the administration’s “First Buddy,” was due to finish his temporary role at the White House by May 30, with the gig as a Special Government Employee lasting a total of 130 days.

Still, Musk had been gradually pulling back from politics for weeks amid whispers of tension with Trump and his allies.

How Elon Musk's White House gig unraveled

Elon Musk blasted the Donald Trump-backed $3.8 trillion spending bill in an interview from his South Texas Starbase, just ahead of a new SpaceX launch.

“It undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk bluntly told CBS on Tuesday night. “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it.”

Speaking to the Washington Post, Musk aired his frustrations about how his government efficiency crew had been treated inside the administration.

“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he said. “Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

Musk earned the nickname “First Buddy” after essentially moving into the White House at the start of Trump’s second term. He was briefing the president, gutting entire federal departments, and even bringing his son X into high-level meetings in the Oval Office.

But Musk’s slash-and-burn approach didn’t sit well with everyone. His aggressive campaign to eliminate wasteful spending resulted in mass layoffs.

Suddenly, Tesla showrooms around the country faced violent protests. Stock prices plummeted, and whispers surfaced that Tesla’s board was considering giving Musk the boot.

Musk admitted to ARS Technica that he may have overcommitted to politics. “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” he told the outlet. “It’s not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

Elon Musk’s final jab at Donald Trump’s bill before his exit 

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO capped off his DC exit with one last barb aimed directly at Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful" bill. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both,” Musk said. “My personal opinion.”

It's worth noting that the bill is estimated to tack on a jaw-dropping $3.8 trillion to the national debt, which is already hovering at a staggering $36 trillion.

"The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized," Musk lamented to the Post. "I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least."

Musk, who is said to have helped save $160 billion in wasteful spending, made a name for himself inside DOGE by decimating 11 federal agencies and firing around 250,000 federal employees. These moves obviously made him either a folk hero or a villain, depending on who you asked.

Despite the apparent rift, Trump appeared to take the high road. He praised Musk after news broke of his DOGE departure and even said the billionaire was welcome to "stay as long" as he wanted.