One thing Elon Musk said in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News was that the Trump administration might face a surprise this coming May.
The billionaire businessman who works for Donald Trump has said that his job might be done by the time his contract ends in May. But what contract is he talking about? Does the government have a job for Musk as an intern? As it turns out, Musk’s contract as a “special government agent” says that he can only work 130 business days a year. Now, who would not want that?
What does Musk do in the government?
The main part of his job is to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he and the president set up to cut back on wasteful government spending. Both of them think that the system needs to be updated and more money needs to be saved by getting rid of some public contracts.
Has he managed to save?
Recent changes include cutting the number of people working for the Social Security Administration and asking recipients to return payments that the system sent them by mistake. The DOGE says that these changes have saved $146 billion, but he wants to save a trillion dollars.
But a lot of experts, including the Associated Press, have looked at these changes and the contracts that DOGE has canceled, and they do not make sense.
It is said that these contracts will save $25 billion, but the outlet found that about 40% of the contracts would not save the government any money, which makes them question how effective the measures being put in place really are.
At what cost are these “savings” achieved?
Some of the savings are thought to come from canceling federal contracts, like those with USAID. As a result, there has been a big drop in international aid for disaster relief.
Organizations have already said that this cutback could make current problems worse and make it even more expensive to fix the problems caused by the lost services.
DOGE has also fired a lot of public employees as another method. Even though these layoffs have been seen as cost savings, they could be thrown out if the courts rule in favor of the employees and order their reinstatement with back pay.
This would not only cancel out the benefits that were thought to have been gained, but it would also cost more because they would have to pay for months of lost wages.
The fall of the Musk empire
While Musk is president, Tesla’s sales in international markets have dropped sharply. This is why some shareholders want the billionaire to return to the company to lead it. Some shareholders think he should hire an acting CEO to run the business while he serves his time in the government.
At the same time, his public approval rating has kept going down, giving people a pretty bad impression of him.
Will he continue working with Trump?
His first 130 days as head of the federal government were very hard, and we do not know if he will want to keep working. Since his business still has not fully recovered and the presentation of the first quarter of 2025 is coming up in April, which could go horribly wrong… He hopes that by the time his long contract ends, he will have saved that trillion dollars he promised. We do not really know yet, and neither does he.
Will Musk be like politicians who say they will do something but never do it? He has not even said how he plans to get to that number. We need to have faith. Or be patient.
