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Elon Musk completely leaving Washington and politics. · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  Elon Musk says he's done with Washington.
• 0:03
  But if the world's richest man steps back from politics
• 0:06
  entirely, is that a sign that the alliance between tech, power
• 0:09
  and federal influence is starting to fall apart?
• 0:12
  A must confirm this week that he's officially ending his role
• 0:16
  in government, closing the chapter on his controversial
• 0:19
  experiment to bring Silicon Valley style efficiency to
• 0:22
  federal bureaucracy. In a post on X, he thanked
• 0:26
  Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending, but
• 0:30
  made it clear that his focus is shifting back to his company's
• 0:33
  Tesla, SpaceX and XAI. The tone is changed sharply from
• 0:37
  just months ago, when Musk called himself Trump's first
• 0:40
  buddy is what's considered one of the administration's most
• 0:43
  influential figures. But now, after months of
• 0:46
  internal clashes, unmet promises and missed opportunities, Musk
• 0:51
  is clearly disillusioned. In a recent interview, he said
• 0:55
  he probably spent too much time on politics.
• 0:58
  What pushed him over the edge? For one, the massive domestic
• 1:01
  policy bill that Trump's team passed last week.
• 1:05
  Musk told CBS News he was disappointed with it.
• 1:09
  He argued the bill increases the federal deficit and undermines
• 1:12
  the work of his own government team called DOGE, and it was
• 1:16
  trying to do the best at cutting costs.
• 1:19
  Now, Trump chose not to respond directly.
• 1:21
  He defended the bill's passage and praised Republicans for
• 1:24
  getting it through. He never mentioned Elon Musk,
• 1:27
  but White House policy chief Stephen Miller took a shot on
• 1:30
  social media without naming him, insisting the bill does reduce
• 1:34
  the deficit and that Musk's team had nothing to do with the
• 1:38
  legislation. Now, Musk's growing frustration
• 1:41
  with Washington goes beyond just that bill.
• 1:44
  He also objected to a high profile deal with the UAE to
• 1:48
  build an AI data center in Abu Dhabi.
• 1:50
  That deal went to Open AI, an organization Musk Co founded but
• 1:54
  has since distanced himself from after falling out with CEO Sam
• 1:58
  Altman. And according to White House
• 1:59
  sources, Musk lobbied to get his own company, XAI, included in
• 2:03
  that deal, but he failed. I still travelled with Trump to
• 2:08
  the region. But when it came time for a
• 2:10
  formal dinner in Qatar, Musk waited in line like everyone
• 2:14
  else. That public image standing on
• 2:16
  the sidelines stood in sharp contrast to his earlier
• 2:19
  dominance. Just a few months back, Musk had
• 2:22
  stormed the stage at C PAC with a chainsaw and bragged about how
• 2:26
  easy it was to save billions of dollars from federal budgets.
• 2:30
  Behind the scenes, though, DOGE had problems.
• 2:32
  The team inflated its saving numbers.
• 2:35
  At times, they posted false claims about cancelled
• 2:38
  contracts, then deleted them. Musk admitted in an interview
• 2:41
  this week that he underestimated how hard it would be to cut
• 2:44
  government spending. He said the system was harder to
• 2:47
  navigate than the expected and blame bureaucracy and a lack of
• 2:51
  political will. Now.
• 2:53
  One major turning point came when Trump learned that Musk was
• 2:56
  scheduled to receive a Pentagon briefing on China.
• 3:00
  After weeks of defending Musk against accusations of conflict
• 3:03
  of interest, Trump reportedly lost patience.
• 3:06
  That meeting never happened, and Musk's access to Trump began to
• 3:11
  narrow. He also lost big financially.
• 3:13
  Musk spent about $25 million backing a candidate in Wisconsin
• 3:18
  who lost the race. He's grown critical of Trump's
• 3:21
  tariffs, and despite promising Trump team he donate $100
• 3:24
  million ahead of the 2026 midterms, that money still
• 3:28
  hasn't arrived. Now, meanwhile, several of
• 3:31
  Musk's top deputies are quietly exiting their government roles.
• 3:35
  Antonio Gracias, who led the doge efforts at the Social
• 3:38
  Security Administration, has moved to investigating a legal
• 3:41
  voting. Steve Davis, another Musk
• 3:43
  loyalist, is also stepping down. The shape up reflects A broader
• 3:47
  pullback now. Musk says he's now spending all
• 3:50
  his time back at work. He posted on X that he's focused
• 3:53
  on test the SpaceX and XAI. Over the weekend he attended a
• 3:57
  SpaceX test launch #9 where there was a failure of the
• 4:02
  booster. It's not really a failure.
• 4:06
  They were testing it to failure and also the ship blew up mid
• 4:09
  flight and the rocket exploded halfway through.
• 4:12
  Musk called it a big improvement and skipped the planned talk on
• 4:16
  making life multiplanetary that night, which was supposed to
• 4:19
  happen about 9:00 but he postponed it and he released a
• 4:23
  video that wasn't live and was prerecorded.
• 4:27
  So what's next for Elon Musk? He's not staying silent.
• 4:31
  He still has a megaphone through X, but for now he's turning away
• 4:34
  from government reform and back to building rockets and AI
• 4:38
  systems. The man who once had Trump's ear
• 4:40
  now seems more interested in Mars than Capitol Hill.
• 4:44
  Elon has officially left Washington frustrated with
• 4:47
  bureaucracy, disillusioned by policy and focus once again, and
• 4:52
  getting humanity to Mars.