WASHINGTON — Elon Musk wants to clear something up: he never asked to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom.
“That’s just where Trump puts me,” Musk said with a laugh, describing the president’s habit of offering spontaneous White House sleepovers. “We’ll be flying on Air Force One or Marine One, and he’ll say, ‘You want to stay over?’ And I’m like, ‘Sure.’”
Sometimes, the calls come late at night—with dessert instructions. “He’ll say, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you grab some ice cream from the kitchen,’” Musk said. The flavor of choice? Caramel Häagen-Dazs.
It was a rare, candid moment in an hour-long interview Musk gave to a group of journalists in the Roosevelt Room—one of his most open conversations since launching DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, under President Trump’s second term. The billionaire tech mogul, who has been leading the charge to slash federal spending and reduce government programs, has become a fixture at the White House, often working seven days a week from a small office tucked away inside the residence.
But those long stretches in Washington are about to change. Musk says he’s scaling back.
Going forward, he expects to spend just one or two days a week on DOGE and will be in D.C. about every other week. The rest of his time will shift back to his companies, particularly Tesla, which recently reported a 71% drop in quarterly earnings—something Musk hinted may have been impacted by his deep dive into politics.
“We’ve found more of a rhythm,” Musk said. “So the time I need to be here is much less. I can go back to mostly running my companies—which, frankly, need me.”
Musk’s presence at the White House, while unusual, was never conventional. Technically, he’s been serving as a “special government employee,” a senior adviser to the president allowed to work up to 130 days per year. But he says there’s no title on his business card—“Literally, it just says my name.”
His office? A tiny, one-window room that looks out onto an HVAC unit. “Which is fine,” Musk joked. “Harder to shoot me. Not a good line of sight.”
What it lacks in views, the office makes up for in screen space. Musk proudly noted it’s home to the largest computer monitor in the White House—where he sometimes squeezes in rounds of Diablo and Path of Exile, two of his favorite video games.
Despite stepping back, Musk remains proud of the team behind DOGE and the controversial changes they’ve implemented. “I’m incredibly proud of the DOGE crew. They get a lot of heat,” he said. “These are people who had great-paying private sector jobs—and left them to work on this mission.”
Asked what it’s been like heading up such a high-profile, high-pressure project, Musk gave a characteristically quirky answer: “It’s 60% fun. Maybe 70%. Depends on the week.”
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. “Being attacked constantly? Not super fun. Seeing Teslas getting torched? Definitely not fun,” he said, referring to incidents of vandalism targeting his company.
As for who will take the reins in his absence, Musk offered a cryptic response: “Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” In other words, he believes DOGE will carry on without him at the center.
“DOGE is a way of life,” he said more than once during the interview, suggesting that the mission—cutting government waste, shaking up bureaucracy—has taken on a life of its own.
