Elon Musk has announced his time spent running US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “will drop significantly” starting in May.
The statement from Musk, who also leads EV maker Tesla, comes at a time when the company has suffered a massive 71 per cent loss to its quarterly profits, which fell to $409 million.
“Probably in the next month, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” the world’s richest person was quoted as saying during a Tesla earnings call.
The revenue of the Austin, Texas-based EV maker fell to $19.3 billion, down 9 per cent in the January through March period.
In recent weeks, analysts have been laying much of the blame for the biggest sales drop in Tesla’s history on Musk’s controversial DOGE role, a position which has resulted in protests outside Tesla showrooms and vandalism at its facilities in the United States. Demonstrations have been held in Europe too.
However, the billionaire claimed during the call, albeit without offering any proof, that the protests were by those who had been receiving the “waste and fraud” being eliminated by DOGE.
“I think the right thing to do is fight the waste and fraud and try to get the country back on the right track. If the ship of America goes down, Tesla will go with it,” Musk said.
“The future of Tesla is brighter than ever. Its problems are not nearly as serious as they have been in the past. Our work on autonomous driving and humanoid robots, would produce a period of sustainable abundance for all,” he added.
