Musk confirms exit from Trump administration amid image rehab tour

Screenshot via XElon Musk pivoted to damage control in his final days as a "special government employee," publicly recommitting to Mars, cars and robots after a bruising year in the political limelight.Why it matters: The billionaire CEO confirmed Wednesday he is departing the Trump administration, though he will remain one of President Trump's most influential outside advisers.By scaling back the time and money he spends on politics, Musk is seeking to claw back the credibility he torched during his toxic tenure in Washington.That won't be easy: SpaceX and Tesla both saw their brand reputations crater over the past year, with the latter enduring violent protests and a steep drop in sales as a result of Musk's activism.Still, Musk is clear-eyed about the task ahead — and has already taken steps to distance himself from Trump in a rare series of interviews over the last several days.Driving the news: Musk told CBS News that he's "disappointed" by the "massive spending bill" passed by the House last week, arguing that it "undermines" the work of his DOGE team.Musk created DOGE to fight what he calls the "existential" threat of a national debt spiral. His team claims to have saved $175 billion in taxpayer money — though even that figure is widely seen as inflated.By comparison, the so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill" — the linchpin of Trump's legislative agenda — is projected to add between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to budget deficits over the next 10 years.Zoom out: In an interview with the Washington Post, Musk conceded that DOGE's efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy — including an original goal of $2 trillion in savings — proved far more challenging than he expected.He complained that DOGE had become "the whipping boy for everything," defending its mission while lamenting the impact it had on his companies."[S]omething bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it," Musk said. "People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool."Between the lines: Musk's media blitz has functioned as part exit interview, part image rehab — an attempt to reassert his identity as an engineering visionary after a year mired in political scrutiny.He spoke to reporters from SpaceX headquarters in Texas ahead of Tuesday night's high-stakes Starship test flight — a moment he said demanded his full attention and a "maniacal sense of urgency.""[P]eople want to have the chill vibes, and SpaceX is sort of ultra hardcore. But if we're not ultra hardcore, how are we going to get to Mars? You're not going to get to Mars in 40 hours a week," Musk told the Post.In an interview with Ars Technica, he went deep on detail — waxing poetic about SpaceX's long-term goals before admitting he "probably did spend a bit too much time on politics.""It's not like I left the companies," he cautioned, arguing that the media "is going to overrepresent any political stuff.""It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks."

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