predicting Musk was \u201chere to stay\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.<\/p>\nOne senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser and continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds. Another cautioned that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump\u2019s orbit is \u201cfooling themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transition, the insiders said, is likely to correspond to the end of Musk\u2019s time as a \u201cspecial government employee,\u201d a special status that temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. That 130-day period is expected to expire in late May or early June.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s defenders inside the administration believe that the time is right for a transition, given their view that there\u2019s only so much more he can cut from government agencies without shaving too close to the bone.<\/p>\n
But many others say he\u2019s an unpredictable, unmanageable force who has had issues communicating his plans with Cabinet secretaries and through the White House chain of command led by chief of staff Susie Wiles, frequently sending them into a frenzy with unexpected and off-message comments on X, his social-media platform \u2014 including sharing unvetted and uncoordinated plans to gut federal agencies.<\/p>\n
The political threat Musk poses was highlighted Tuesday after Democrats seized on Musk\u2019s roughly $20 million investment in the Wisconsin race, with some openly calling it a referendum on the polarizing mogul.<\/p>\n
Trump, however, had already started easing the glide path starting more than a week before the election \u2014 including at a March 24 Cabinet meeting where he told attendees that Musk would be transitioning out of the administration, according to one of the insiders, who did not attend the meeting but was briefed on the comments. A senior administration official confirmed Trump discussed Musk\u2019s transition at the meeting.<\/p>\n
Immediately after making the announcement, Trump invited reporters and cameras in for the tail end of the meeting, where he lavished praise on Musk, who attended the meeting wearing a red MAGA hat. Cabinet secretaries \u2014 many of whom had clashed with Musk just weeks before over Musk\u2019s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to cutting their departments \u2014 in turn jumped in to hail his bureaucracy-slashing campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cElon, I want to thank you \u2014 I know you\u2019ve been through a lot,\u201d Trump said, mentioning death threats and the spate vandalism directed at the cars built by Tesla before calling him \u201ca patriot\u201d and \u201ca friend of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both men subsequently hinted publicly at a transition. When Fox News\u2019 Bret Baier asked Musk on Thursday whether he\u2019d be ready to leave when his special government employee status expires, he essentially declared mission accomplished: \u201cI think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that time frame.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday night, Trump told reporters that \u201cat some point Elon\u2019s going to want to go back to his company,\u201d adding: \u201cHe wants to. I\u2019d keep him as long as I could keep him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the President said, this White House would love to keep Elon around for as long as possible,\u201d White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Tuesday as election results from Wisconsin rolled in. \u201cElon has been instrumental in executing the President\u2019s agenda, and will continue this good work until the President says otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
But many close to Trump are increasingly relieved that Musk is expected to soon move on from his central role at Trump\u2019s side and that the litany of DOGE surprises \u2014 which have ranged from a weekend email blast demanding federal workers list their work output to accidental cuts to Ebola prevention programs \u2014 might finally be coming to a close.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s to say nothing of their concerns about Musk as a political liability who has served as a rallying point for fractured Democrats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man. The president remains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-block","category-world"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9024,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions\/9024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.negociosdeangola.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}