Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his company’s earnings call on Tuesday by saying that his time spent running President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency will drop “significantly” starting in May.
Musk, who has watched Tesla’s stock tumble by more than 40% this year, said he’ll continue to support the president with DOGE “to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.”
After spending almost $300 million in the 2024 campaign to help return Trump to the White House, Musk created DOGE and joined the administration with a mission to drastically reduce the size and capability of the federal government.
He said he’ll continue to spend a “day or two per week” on government issues “for as long as the president would like me to do so.”
Musk’s commentary came after his company reported disappointing first-quarter results, including a 20% year-over-year slump in automotive revenue and 71% plunge in net income.
In addition to challenges the company already faced, such as competition out of China and an aging fleet of electric vehicles, Tesla has recently been hit with protests in the U.S. and Europe and brand damage due to Musk’s ties to Trump and his support of Germany’s far-right AfD party.
“The protests that you’ll see out there, they’re very organized,” Musk said on Tuesday’s call. He claimed, without evidence, that some people are likely protesting “because they’re receiving fraudulent money” or are “recipients of wasteful largesse.”
On its website, which was last updated on Sunday, DOGE says its cuts have led to an estimated $160 billion in savings. However, Musk’s estimates of savings have been challenged, and DOGE has deleted some of the largest purported savings.
Over that same stretch, Tesla has lost roughly $600 billion in market cap.
DOGE has also made cuts at agencies charged with oversight of his companies. They include the SEC, Federal Aviation Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The White House said in early February that Musk was serving as a “special government employee,” a designation with fewer requirements when it comes to conflict-of-interest disclosures and ethics policies.
The Department of Justice says the title is for anyone expected to work for the government for 130 days or less in a year. The Trump administration will hit its 130th day at the end of May.
Job cuts from DOGE’s work have come from across the government, at agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, National Park Service, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, according to the Associated Press.
As of February, staffers from DOGE had pushed top-ranking officials at the Department of Education out of their offices, rearranged the furniture and set up white noise machines to muffle their voices, according to employees at the agency. U.S. senators expressed concern that DOGE had possibly gained access to federal student loan data on tens of millions of borrowers.
Also in February, the Trump administration said that USAID would shut down as an independent agency and be moved under the State Department.
