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SHOCKER! Elon Musk Quits DOGE, but he didn't [1]
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Date: 2025-04-02
The story started at Politico. It was then amplified at The Daily Mail, a sort of British version of the New York Post.
The Politico story was written by their Capitol Bureau Chief and senior Washington Columnist, Rachael Bade. She's got some creds. The story has hit the internet as you would expect. Right now I'm looking at this with the lens of an April Fools' Day joke, like yesterday's that Warren Buffett was said to have bought Tesla for a trillion dollars in cash.
Bade filed her story at 11:17 a.m. ET. The time stamps on the posts are my Pacific time. She then posted on X.
An hour and a half later, Karoline Leavitt called the story "garbage."
Who do we believe? Is Musk leaving DOGE completely. No. We could only wish. Is DOGE going to shut down? No, Trump loves the havoc it is wreaking.
Musk has probably decided to take his poison back to his companies that are under legitimate attacks. At Tesla he's facing not only the effects of the Tesla Takedown protests, a 13% drop in 1st quarter car deliveries, a sales report coming out on April 22nd, which is going to look dismal, and Tesla shareholder lawsuits for tanking the stock with his political shenanigans. There are also the stories like Starlink suddenly being given a contract at the FAA, when they're firing air traffic controllers. SpaceX getting more scrutiny by journalists.
Leavitt was reacting to the X post, not the filed Politico story, but they're not much different. The Politico story just has more background and logic for the change. I've added the list of business reasons Musk needed to cut down on his political addiction.
Who knows? Maybe that big loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election and his meddling in it woke up enough Republicans to tell Trump enough is enough. Nope. Trump still loves Musk and Trump didn't throw him out for driving his cabinet crazy.
The Guardian has their own take on it without explaining what the "130 day service limit" is all about. Here's an explanation of it at the Department of the interior. It's the limit for a "special government employee." Which is how Musk has been described by Trump the whole time. Only 130 days allowed in a 365 day period. If you go 130 days from January 20th, that would be May 30th.
So, there's good news, but not that good. Musk is still around but will probably turn into an advisor, which is what he supposedly was already.
It still gets confusing because he doesn't have to do anything differently till May 30th. He could become a normal employee without a time limit. Trump would find a way to keep him around if he wants to.
So, I'm going to have to give the whole "scoop" a pretty much big yawn for it's reporting of a big change.
I wish he were gone and out the door.
A long time ago I came up with a term for what Musk was doing was Elon-Gate, as in elongate. Somebody did it for real as a visual.
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