Elon Musk has told his followers on X, “You are the media now.” Since joining the Trump administration, he has eschewed interviews with outlets he perceived as unfriendly, preferring to stay within the safe spaces of Fox News, conservative podcasts and his own social-media conversations.
But as the Wall Street Journal prepared to publish a piece Wednesday evening about Tesla’s board allegedly seeking to replace Musk as CEO (a claim Musk and Tesla strenuously denied), the world’s richest man and top Trump adviser stepped out of the proverbial bubble. Musk, along with three top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team members, sat down with about a dozen mainstream news reporters in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room to reflect on his time in the Trump administration — at one point comparing himself to an iconic religious figure.
“Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” he said, according to The Washington Post, when asked about who will lead DOGE in his absence. Musk has indicated he intends to step back from his DOGE role this month. “Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
Reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Axios, Semafor, Bloomberg, ABC, NBC, and Fox News were in attendance. Even the Associated Press was present — a notable inclusion considering the White House has tried to remove the wire service from the press pool and ban them from key events over their coverage.
According to a source familiar with the situation, the Musk sit-down came together rather quickly. White House officials notified reporters on Wednesday morning that they were invited to interview Musk and were given about an hour to respond. The gaggle took place in the late afternoon and lasted about an hour.
The source said Musk was engaged with the reporters and — despite his longstanding hostility with mainstream press — was not at all confrontational.
In fact, this person said, Musk even sounded a little defeated, despite comparing himself to Buddha, a sentiment that some reporters conveyed in their coverage of the meeting. “Looking Back at 101 Days, Elon Musk Sounds Less Confident,” wrote The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan.
During the hourlong conversation, Musk admitted that DOGE has not yet met the $1 trillion in cuts he initially proposed. Instead, he said, he’s cut around $160 billion, and that it will be “really difficult” to reach his goal without more support in Washington.
“It’s sort of, how much pain is the Cabinet and the Congress willing to take?” Musk said according to the AP. “It can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
Musk also admitted that in the process of culling the federal workforce, some vital employees were “accidentally let go.” DOGE’s heavy-handed spending cuts have led to widespread backlash aimed at Republican leadership and Musk himself.
Musk also told reporters he has stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom “more than once” and that President Trump once implored him in a late-night call to go get some ice cream — caramel-flavored Häagen-Dazs, according to USA Today — from the White House kitchen.
Even though he’ll reduce his time spent in Washington, he’ll keep his office on the White House grounds, Musk told reporters. That office, he said, according to Axios, “has a window but all you see is the HVAC unit, which is fine. It makes it harder to shoot me, I guess.”
Musk also boasted he would still have the largest computer monitor on the premises.
“DOGE is a way of life,” he said.
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