Elon Musk has formally left his role in Donald Trump’s administration.
Mr Musk sported a black eye at a press conference with Mr Trump in which the president confirmed the tech billionaire’s expected departure on Friday.
The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X said his five-year-old son X Æ A-12, or X for short, was responsible for the bruising.
“I was horsing around with my son… I said ‘go ahead and punch me in the face’, and he did,” Mr Musk told reporters in the Oval Office.
“It turns out a five-year-old can punch, actually. I didn’t really feel much at the time.”
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At the press conference, Mr Trump thanked Mr Musk “for his incredible service” with his work for his help setting up and running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and suggested he would continue to be “back and forth”.
The US president handed Mr Musk a golden key in a White House-branded box, which he described as a “special present”.
“Elon gave an incredible service. [There is] nobody like him. And he had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he is an incredible patriot,” Mr Trump said.
“Some of the media organisations in this room are the slingers,” Mr Musk said when asked about the “slings and arrows” in an apparent dig at The New York Times.
The US president praised Mr Musk as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced”, commending him for “stepping forward to put his talents into our nation” by leading DOGE.
Meanwhile, Mr Musk, who was wearing a DOGE-branded baseball cap and a T-shirt with “The Dogefather” written on it, said it was “not the end of DOGE, but the beginning” and that the DOGE team would “only grow stronger”.
The 53-year-old added that he would continue to visit the White House and would still be an adviser to Mr Trump.
During the press conference, Mr Trump also turned to various conflicts around the globe, telling reporters that Israel and Hamas are “very close to an agreement” for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The president said an agreement with Iran to stop it from developing nuclear weapons was also “very close”.
Meanwhile, following recent tensions between India and Pakistan, Mr Trump took credit for de-escalating the situation between the two countries.
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The US president had handed Mr Musk the task of cutting government spending by sacking federal workers and eliminating bureaucratic waste as head of the newly formed DOGE department.
Mr Musk oversaw drastic cuts to America’s humanitarian efforts, leading to criticism that the US was relinquishing some of its global influence.
Despite promising to save taxpayers as much as $2trn (£1.5trn), DOGE currently estimates its efforts have saved $175bn (£130bn).
Mr Musk claimed the savings could be even higher, saying in the Oval Office on Friday: “We do expect over time a trillion dollars in savings. Say by the middle of next year, with presidential support, we can do it.”
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Mr Trump read out a list of savings DOGE has allegedly made, including cutting $101m spent on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies in the Department of Education, $59m on hotel rooms for migrants in New York, $42m on a project for social and behavioural change in Uganda, £24m “for an Arab Sesame Street” and $8m “for making mice transgender”.
But questions have been raised about whether the department has actually saved taxpayers as much money as suggested.
Meanwhile, Mr Musk – who famously brought his son X Æ A-12 to the Oval Office – has expressed frustration about resistance to his ideas, and clashed with other senior members of the Trump administration.
He claimed DOGE had been blamed for cuts that had nothing to do with his department.
“What we found was happening was if there were any cuts anywhere, people would assume that was done by DOGE,” he explained.
“We essentially became the ‘DOGE’ boogie man.”
It comes after Mr Musk’s father, Errol Musk, speaking to Gillian Joseph on The World earlier this week, insisted there had been “no rift between Elon and Donald Trump”.
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As a “special government employee”, US law allowed Mr Musk to serve for 130 days, which would have ended around Friday.
He announced he was leaving in a post on X, in which he said: “I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”
