Musk to remain ‘friend and adviser’ to Trump after leaving Doge, says Vance

JD Vance said on Thursday that Elon Musk will remain a “friend and an adviser” to the vice-president and Donald Trump after he leaves his current role with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

In recent days, several news outlets, including Politico, reported that Trump had told members of his cabinet that the tech billionaire, who holds the position of “special government employee”, would soon be stepping back from his role in the administration, and would take on a supporting role and return to the private sector.

As a special government employee, Musk’s current service is capped at 130 days, which, if counted from the day of the inauguration, is set to expire sometime in late May.

But on Wednesday, Musk dismissed the report as “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the Politico story calling it “garbage”, and adding that Musk “will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete”.

And then, on Thursday morning, in an interview with Fox News, Vance stated that “Doge has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.”

“Elon came in and we said, ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money,” Vance added. “We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ – and that’s what Elon signed up for, but of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser and by the way, the work of Doge is not even close to done, the work of Elon is not even close to done.”

Despite Musk’s 130-day cap, Doge is expected to continue until 2026, as a result of Trump’s executive order.

The reports regarding Musk’s future involvement with the Trump administration come as earlier this week, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, defeated a Musk-backed conservative judge in the race for a seat on the state’s supreme court, framed by Democrats as a referendum on the popularity of Musk and Trump.

Musk invested millions in the race, in what what became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, and also spent time campaigning in the state.

In her acceptance speech, Crawford said: “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!”.