Tech billionaire Elon Musk, seen at a Cabinet meeting at the White House, has reflected on his first 100 days working with the Trump administration. Photo / Yuri Gripas, Washington Post
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, seen at a Cabinet meeting at the White House, has reflected on his first 100 days working with the Trump administration. Photo / Yuri Gripas, Washington Post
Public opinion on Musk has soured, with 57% disapproving of his performance in April.
Elon Musk sat down in the Roosevelt Room late Wednesday afternoon with a gathering of journalists and, chuckling at something on his iPhone, asked if anyone had any good jokes.
Over an hour, he revealed that, during his 100 days working with the Trump administration, he had slept more than once in the Lincoln Bedroom. He had eaten a tub full of caramel Häagen-Dazs ice cream. He also compared himself to the Buddha.
He was a rare man, in rare form.
In the opening burst of activity during President Donald Trump’s second term, few people have played a more central or high-profile role than Musk, the billionaire businessman who has led the President’s effort to remake the vast federal bureaucracy and seemed to always be at his side.
He has been vilified by opponents. He has been parodied on Saturday Night Live. He has clashed with members of the Cabinet. And Americans have grown increasingly critical of his role in the Trump administration.
But as Musk’s role begins to fade – he has said he is going to be spending much less time in Washington and more time running his companies – he reflected on what it’s been like these past 100 days. At times, he projected a can-you-believe-this attitude. He said he is still a little unsure his ideas will come to fruition. And at moments he appeared as though he couldn’t believe he’s here in the first place – the man running the show wondering aloud how the show even started.
“It is funny that we’ve got Doge. Doesn’t the absurdity of that seem like a weird simulation? It was a meme coin at one point,” he said.
“How did we get here?” he said. “Doesn’t it seem absurd?”
Several times, Musk referred to his efforts with religious fervour – “Doge is a way of life. Like Buddhism” – and he recalled being struck by the similarities between his efforts and those undertaken by former President Bill Clinton and former Vice-President Al Gore.
“We’re basically Democrats from the 1990s who got teleported into 2025,” he said.
Musk recalled the blizzard-like pace of activity that has marked the past three months, during which his team infiltrated various federal agencies and gained control of their systems, consolidating data in ways it sought to use to find Government waste. The effort has attracted lawsuits seeking to block the US Doge Service’s access to private data, concerns about potential conflicts of interest for Musk and others, and criticism over the treatment of federal employees.
It has also soured public opinion on Musk, with 57% disapproving of his performance in a late-April Post-ABC poll, up from 49% in February.
“Things have been very intense,” Musk said. “It’s a start-up, effectively.”
Asked where he slept, he said he spent some nights inside the White House residence – evenings that, by his telling, unfolded like boyhood friends spontaneously inviting one another over for a sleepover.
“The President is – I guess we’re good friends,” Musk said. “And we’ll be on Air Force One or Marine One. And then he’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to stay over?’ I’m like, ‘Sure’.”
Elon Musk says he is pleased with the US$160 billion ($270b) in estimated savings that Doge – the Department of Government Efficiency – claims to have achieved. Photo / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
He emphasised that the Lincoln Bedroom was something Trump offered, not something he requested. Trump gave him a tour and talked about the history of the room – and then provided it for him.
But the presidential hosting duties didn’t stop.
“He’ll actually call, like, late at night and say, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you get some ice cream from the kitchen’,” Musk said.
He obliged, he said. He proceeded to empty the entire container.
“It was epic. I mean, don’t tell RFK,” he said, in reference to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy jnr, letting out several bursts of laughter. “This stuff is amazing. I ate a whole tub of it, added 3lbs [1.4kg] in one night.”
He declined to say how many nights he stayed over, but he offered that it was “more than once”.
Musk said he is pleased with the US$160 billion ($270b) in estimated savings that Doge – the Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency – claims to have achieved, and he says it is still “possible” to get to US$1 trillion.
“It’s a long road to go. It’s really difficult. But our rate of savings per day is pretty good,” he said. “It’s sort of, how much pain is the Cabinet and this Congress willing to take? It can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints. And the fraudsters complain the loudest.”
He said his team has found instances of fraud and turned over cases to the Justice Department. He also said it has unearthed widespread fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, although many of the biggest examples cited in the past have been found to be overblown or inaccurate.
“There are definitely fraud rings operating, but in order to break it up, it’s basically like mafia,” he said. “You work your way up the chain until you get the mafia boss.”
But cutting funding, Musk said, has proved difficult. He has faced opposition from members of the Cabinet protecting their agencies and members of Congress speaking out for their constituents.
“There’s an intense set of interests in the vast federal bureaucracy that wants to keep things as they were before,” he said. “In order to change that, it’s like changing the direction of a fleet of supertankers.”
He’s planning now to phase out his time in Washington.
“It’s like 60% fun, 70% fun. Depends on the week,” he said. “Being attacked relentlessly is not super fun. Seeing cars burning is not fun.”
Previously, he was spending almost every day working on Doge but now plans to spend an average of one or two days per week, perhaps travelling to Washington every other week.
“The amount of time that it’s necessary for me to spend here is much less,” he said. “And I can return to primarily running my companies, which do need me.”
Musk said he would keep his West Wing office, which he said is small and where, from time to time, he has played video games including Diablo and Pathfinder on a large computer monitor.
“It has a view of nothing. It has a window, but all you see is the HVAC unit,” he said. “Which is fine. It’s harder to shoot me there … there’s not a good line of sight. I like my comically tiny office upstairs.”
He said about 100 employees work on Doge, and it’s unclear how many will continue. He believes the effort can continue without him running it, possibly for the duration of Trump’s second term.
Asked who would lead it when he fades, he demurred.
“Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” he said. “Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
