Elon Musk will remain a “friend and an adviser” to the White House after his time directing DOGE’s reordering of the federal government is through, Vice President JD Vance said in a Thursday interview.
The big picture: Musk is a “special government employee” who can only work 130 days per year, but Vance told “FOX & Friends” that “the work of Elon is not even close to done.”
Driving the news: Vance said reports the richest man in the world would leave the administration imminently are “fake news.”
- He continued, “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.”
- While Vance said Musk signed up for about “six months” of work, he said their sweeping plans for the bureaucracy are not going to “happen all in six months.”
Zoom out: Musk has become the face of the administration’s massive bureaucracy, which has laid off tens of thousands of civil servants and seen federal grants slashed.
- Musk’s favorability rating is underwater, and a recent state Supreme Court race that he poured millions into (only to see the Democratic-backed candidate soundly win) was widely seen as a rebuke of him and Trump.
- “He’s got a big company to run … At some point he’s going to be going back,” Trump said of the Tesla CEO earlier this week.
Go deeper: Elon Musk is on a losing streak
