Elon Musk will continue to be a “friend and adviser” to the Trump administration — even after his stint at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is up, Vice President JD Vance said Thursday.
The billionaire, who is DOGE’s lodestar, is expected to step back at the end of next month given his tenure with the admin was only ever meant to be temporary.
“Of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser,” Vance told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” following reports in lefty media outlets that Musk was stepping down.
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“Fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president — and he’s done a lot of good things.”
“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,'” the veep continued.
“We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ — and that’s what Elon signed up for.”
Per federal regulations, Musk could only remain in his post for 130 consecutive days as a special government employee.
Still, Politico and other left-wing pundits on Wednesday heralded his imminent departure as evidence of a fractured Trump-Musk alliance.
Blasting the reports as “fake news,” Vance vowed the work of DOGE would continue even after Musk left.
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“The work of DOGE is not even close to done. The work of Elon is not even close to done,” he said. “DOGE has got a lot of work to do … that work is going to continue after Elon leaves.”
Musk, for his part, acknowledged the 130-day limit just last week, saying in a separate Fox interview, “I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that time frame.”
He also told investors in early February that he only expected to be in the Trump White House for roughly four months.
Under the current mandate, Musk’s last day at the DOGE helm is pegged at May 30, exactly 130 days since Trump’s inauguration.
His tenure is expected to be up at the end of next month, two sources close to the White House told The Post.
Musk has already made waves with DOGE’s major cuts at the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Education, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Social Security Administration.
“You look at all of the fraudulent grants that they found,” Vance said Thursday as he lauded Musk’s DOGE cuts.
“You look at people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments. You see, our social security system, 40% of the people who are calling in are actually committing fraud. That means the 60% who need their social security checks are waiting in line.”
“People don’t realize how fast and uncontrolled the bureaucracy was. We started to chip away at it, but there’s a lot of work to do. It’s not going to happen all in six months. It’s going to take a long and committed effort,” Vance added.
