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WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill.
“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 wrote on his social media platform X.
“The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.
The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump’s bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency , which has fired tens of thousands of people.
Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump’s side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for dissatisfaction with the administration.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday.
Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.
“A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.
The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.
“The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.
All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.
But Musk’s comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.
Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.
Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X’s latest launch on Tuesday.
“Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE’s failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”
Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down.
Musk’s own businesses suffered in the meantime.
Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm’s profits slumped.
“People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk told the Post.
Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars — the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean.
The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.
 

SINGAPORE: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will try to convince Asian defense leaders this weekend that the United States is a more trusted partner for the region than China, US officials told Reuters, as questions linger about the Trump administration’s commitment to the region.
Hegseth, who has spent a large portion of his first months on the job focused on domestic issues, countering diversity, equity and inclusion in the military and taking aim at the press, will make his first extended remarks in Singapore on Saturday about how he envisions US defense policy in the Indo-Pacific.
He will be addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, which runs this year from May 31-June 1. Defense ministers, senior military and security officials and diplomats from around the world are expected to attend. French President Emmanuel Macron will deliver the keynote address on Friday.
“Secretary Hegseth is going to make the case to Asian allies about why the United States is a better partner than the CCP,” said a senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official, who was using an acronym for China’s Communist Party, said Hegseth had the opportunity to take advantage of Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun’s expected absence from the dialogue, where US and Chinese delegates have locked horns in previous years.
Hegseth’s speech will be closely watched as it comes after President Donald Trump has lashed out at traditional allies, most recently with tariffs.
Hegseth has also roiled allies in Europe. In February, he warned Europe against treating America like a “sucker” while addressing a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“There’s certainly uncertainty being expressed, and sometimes I think it’s probably fair to characterize it as a concern,” a second senior US defense official said, referring to anxiety among Asian allies.
General Dan Caine, the recently confirmed US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also expected to attend the dialogue.
Some of the Trump administration’s early moves in the Indo-Pacific have raised eyebrows. The US moved air defense systems from Asia to the Middle East earlier this year as tensions with Iran spiked — an effort which took 73 C-17 flights.
But Hegseth visited the Philippines and Japan in March, a trip in which experts said the secretary stuck by the more traditional importance of allies.
Ely Ratner, who was the Pentagon’s top official on China under the Biden administration, said allies in Asia were seeking a consistent policy from Hegseth.
“The region will be watching closely as to whether the US secretary of defense that shows up at Shangri-la looks like the one that traveled to the Philippines and Japan or has more of the harder edge that we’ve seen from the Trump administration in Europe,” said Ratner.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, was only narrowly confirmed as defense secretary in January. He has moved with stunning speed to reshape the department, firing top generals and admirals as he seeks to implement Trump’s national security agenda.
His leadership has been under intense scrutiny after it was revealed that he shared sensitive war plans on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in two signal group chats. Trump has stuck by him through the turmoil.
Hegseth will likely get a friendly audience at the Shangri-La Dialogue, said Greg Poling, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.
“Asian allies, and particularly the Philippines, feel a lot more reassured than our European allies, but there’s always going to be that voice in the back of their head,” Poling said.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is co-leading a bi-partisan delegation to the Shangri-la Dialogue, said her aim was to reassure Asian allies that the United States was committed, a message she said Hegseth was not capable of delivering.
“He’s only got this job because he sucked up to President Trump and looked good on Fox News. So let’s be clear about the capabilities of the secretary of defense,” Duckworth told Reuters.