Elon Musk has said he will be ‘spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms’ amid rumours of a falling out with US president Donald Trump.
The Tesla founder was previously dubbed ‘first buddy’ after heading up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), making brutal job cuts to reduce government spending.
Musk faced widespread criticism, with some even choosing to boycott Tesla, with Trump sticking by him throughout it all.
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But recently, there are rumours their relationship has fractured.
Though Musk slammed reports that Trump had told cabinet members he’d be stepping down from his government role within the ‘coming weeks’ as fake news, he’s since hinted he’s stepping back from politics.
At an economic forum in Qatar last week, Musk said he was planning to cut his political spending after shelling out $300 million for Trump’s presidential campaign.
He said: “In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future. I think I've done enough.”
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He later added: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.”
Meanwhile, analysts at Politico noticed Trump went from posting about Musk three to four times a week on Truth Social to not mentioning him at all since April. Always a red flag when your beau stops posting about you on socials.
These aren't the only signs Musk may have got cold feet in terms of his role with the Trump administration.
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He hinted he’d be looking to spend more time at his companies - X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX - after the former experienced an outage for around 25,000 users on Saturday.
Musk wrote on the platform: “Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.
“I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.
“As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made. The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”
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With reports that Tesla investors were concerned that Musk is spread too thin with his commitments at DOGE, the billionaire is also set for product launches at several of his companies.
Tesla is gearing up to trial robotaxis in Austin, Texas, this June, with plans to start with 10 self-driving vehicles in parts of the city before scaling up to thousands within months.
X, meanwhile, is set to launch X Money in ‘a very limited beta’, which will see the social networking site diversify into payments and banking.
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In an earnings call with Tesla investors back in April, Musk said from this month his ‘time allocation at DOGE will drop significantly.'
He added that he would spend ‘a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the President would like me to do so, as long as it is useful.'
Topics: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Politics, Twitter
Simon Fearn