President Donald Trump made it crystal clear aboard Air Force One this week: he’s not letting Elon Musk go without a fight. After rumors swirled that Musk’s role in the federal government may be winding down, the president reassured reporters that the tech titan isn’t going anywhere—at least, not if Trump can help it.
“Elon is fantastic. He’s a patriot,” Trump said. “He can stay at the White House as long as he’d like. I want him on the team for as long as possible.”
The role in question? Musk is currently serving as a “special government employee” for the Department of Government Efficiency—Trump’s bold, MAGA-fueled reinvention of the failed U.S. Digital Service. Now dubbed DOGE (yes, that DOGE), the agency was created by executive order on Inauguration Day to root out waste, abuse, and corruption buried deep in the federal bureaucracy.
And according to Trump, Musk’s team just hit pay dirt.
“DOGE found something horrible. Something incredible,” Trump said during the conversation. But true to form, the president declined to spill the details—at least not yet.
That’s enough to make the swamp sweat. Because when Trump says he’s found something “horrible,” it’s usually not good news for the unelected career parasites running D.C.’s bloated alphabet soup agencies.
Musk’s time in government, however, comes with a clock. Under current federal ethics laws, “special government employees” can only work 130 days per year. For Musk, that deadline lands around May 30. Naturally, Politico jumped on the opportunity to spin the story, claiming Trump insiders were frustrated with Musk’s “unpredictability” and his potential to be a “political liability.”
In other words, the Left’s favorite bogeyman is still doing his job too well.
Unpredictable? Maybe. But Musk is the kind of brilliant disruptor who makes bureaucrats nervous—and that’s precisely why Trump tapped him in the first place. He’s not in D.C. to play nice with career staffers. He’s there to expose waste, crush red tape, and reboot the federal government from the inside out.
And clearly, it’s working.
When asked whether he’d consider finding another position to extend Musk’s stay, Trump didn’t hesitate. “I would. I think Elon’s great,” he said. “But he also has a company—or a number of companies—to run.”
That’s the reality: the guy is running Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, and who knows what else. Yet he still found time to drop into Washington and drop bombs on government inefficiency.
It’s also telling that Trump said much of the team working under Musk at DOGE may eventually find themselves in full-time roles within federal agencies. Translation: the Musk mindset is here to stay, even if Elon himself heads back to the private sector later this year.
So what exactly did Musk’s team uncover at DOGE? What’s this “horrible” revelation Trump teased? We don’t know yet—but the fact that Trump won’t say more suggests it’s big. Possibly another deep-state scandal waiting to burst into the daylight.
One thing’s for sure: the D.C. establishment would love to see Elon Musk gone. Which is why Trump is doing everything he can to keep him close.
The American people didn’t send Donald Trump back to the White House to babysit bureaucrats. They sent him to tear down the corrupt, bloated system that’s been stealing from taxpayers and strangling innovation for decades. And if that means keeping Elon Musk in the mix for as long as the law allows—or longer—so be it.
