The “special relationship” between President Donald Trump and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has come to the end of the line. On Wednesday night, Elon announced that his assignment as a “special government employee” at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was ending. On Friday that decision became official as the president gave Musk a farewell celebration in the White House. Of course, Trump tried to “spin” the story by claiming Musk’s actions as very successful. Read on for the “rest of the story”.

They had a transactional relationship that had hardly been created “in heaven”. Therefore, when they were no longer useful to each other, it was time to call it quits, although they have done so rather amiably.

As head of DOGE, Musk led the crusade to make huge reductions to federal spending. (I do applaud the attempt to move towards a balanced budget. It is Musk’s methods that I criticize.) He infamously appeared on stage with a chain saw and promised to cut out waste, corruption, and fraud from federal agencies. He originally predicted he would save $2 trillion, but in fact, the savings are closer to $150 billion. Even these “savings” lack documented evidence. Some of his cuts, like the hollowing out of USAID, were unbelievably cruel and caused the premature, unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of malnourished and sick people all over the world. Other agencies saw the number of their employees decimated with a chain saw with no rhyme nor reason, instead of the needed precision of a scalpel. For example, his cuts included the federal employees who were responsible for overseeing our atomic energy program. These workers had to be rehired within days. Some of his cost-cutting firings have caused more loss in federal income than the dollars that were saved. A prime example is the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) whose personnel numbers were cut in half during the tax season. Not only did this cause significant delays in the processing of tax returns, a reduction in the availability of taxpayer assistance services, and problems with the implementation of recent tax code changes. It will also greatly reduce the number of audits performed on those suspected of trying to cheat the system. The amount underpaid by these cheaters is measured in millions and perhaps billions of dollars, which will now not be collected.

Most of Musk’s indiscriminate cuts are tied up in the courts. The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit for violating federal privacy laws for giving DOGE access to systems that contained personal information on millions of Americans without their consent. The payments for these legal fees will be astronomical. For all of these reasons, Musk’s approval rate in national polls have fallen to about 35-38%, several points below Trump’s. Consumers have also shown their displeasure by boycotting Tesla cars. Sales have fallen significantly this spring not only in the United States, but also in Canada and by a whopping 50% in Europe.

Nevertheless, Musk is rich enough that he didn’t need to hide his opinions. He hated to be a “yes man”. He publicly feuded with members of Trump’s cabinet. He recently pointed out that he disagrees with the Trump agenda on some key issues. For example, he criticized the “big, beautiful budget” bill for increasing the national debt by about $4 trillion which is directly opposite to the goals of DOGE. As this bill has moved to the U.S. Senate, it now depends on the courage (or lack thereof) of Republican senators. Will they increase the debt by giving beautiful tax breaks to the very rich, while at the same time cutting benefits to Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and Veterans? Musk is gone, but there still is time to correct some of his mistakes.