Trump says Musk will soon leave the White House, according to Politico.

WashingtonElon Musk's days at the White House appear to be numbered. US President Donald Trump has told his inner circle that the billionaire will step back from his role as a government advisor in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the discussions. PoliticalThe leak coincides with a time when the billionaire had already engaged in closed-door confrontations with other cabinet members and his image threatened to become a liability for Trump. Musk's symbolic defeat in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which have been read as a referendum on his popularity, is a further sign of the decline of the tycoon's right-hand man.

According to the media, which cites three anonymous sources, Trump remains satisfied with Musk and his work as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but both have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for the South African to take care of his business and assume a secondary role. Beyond the internal rifts within the Trump administration, Musk's involvement in the ultra-global agenda has caused a boycott campaign against their cars throughout Europe and the United States. While attacks against electric vehicles were seen on the streets as a gesture of protest, Tesla sales were falling in the market. Musk's company closed its first quarter with a 13% drop in sales compared to the same period last year.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has already reacted, with an attack, to the media outlet's exclusive. "This 'exclusive' is garbage. Elon Musk and President Trump have said publicly that Elon will leave the public service as a special employee of the government when the incredible attack on the DOGE is over," the press secretary said in a publication to DOGE plans to end the operation in 2026, as the executive order that Trump will sign to create the work group, while at the end of May or beginning of June the operation is expected to end as a "special government employee." amb The businessman both internally and externally: Musk's presence at the presidential cabinet meetings or the photograph in the gardens of the White House with a Tesla is a good example. But it seems that all of Musk's eccentricism is overwhelming for a presidential court and the image of singer Kid Rock dressed in the rain at the Oval Office is not strange. Now, beneath the internal frictions in Tesla's power struggle and losses there is a third element of contention: the rampant conflict of interest that represents Musk as a "special government employee."

Conflict of interest

Each time Trump has further reduced Musk's power, it has been at the height of media hype surrounding some internal crisis, while the White House has been moving forward with legal protections for the billionaire's role in the face of potential legal battles. As the leader of DOGE, Musk has been leading cuts across agencies and departments that had open investigations against their companies. Without going any further, the cooperation agency USAID, the first to fall under the DOGE, was investigating Starlink for suspicions of having provided services to Russia in its operations in Ukraine. With USAID dismantled, the investigation has been practically buried.

Weeks ago, the White House had already published a court document stating that Musk was not the legal administrator of DOGE, but it also did not clarify who that was. Since the working group was created, Trump and his entire team have presented the South African as its leader, but in the legal sphere, the administration has begun to distance itself. In mid-March, Trump also signed an executive order relegating Musk to a supporting role and handing over the leadership of the cuts to the secretaries of government. The tycoon argued that he was leaving his partner's chainsaw behind to apply the "scalpel." A gesture that, beyond wanting to calm the waters within the administration, also represented a further step in the precautionary measures that the White House was taking.

The public distancing from Musk, however, does not mean a total disengagement. A government official explains to Political that the billionaire will likely continue advising the new administration, while another claims it's "self-deluded" to think Musk will disappear completely. What the outlet's sources do point out is that the billionaire will end his time as a "special government employee," a decision that coincides precisely with the growing conflict of interest that both Trump and Musk had denied.