Trump conducts the weirdest exit interview in history as Musk departs the White House — for now
Elon Musk’s exit interview began like any other.
The boss heaped praise on the departing employee while demonstrating a tenuous grasp of exactly what it is he did. The employee vastly inflated his achievements, and the pair made vague promises to stay in touch.
From there, it veered into a freewheeling discussion about transgender mice, Musk’s alleged prolific use of horse tranquilizer, nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and a potential pardon for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, should he be convicted.
Now that Musk’s legally limited 130-day term as a “special government employee” is over, the most destructive professional partnership since Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader shacked up in the Death Star has finally come to an end.
Trump and Musk, the powerful bromance that shook the world, are taking a break — for now at least.
The hour-long farewell, in front of the world’s press, came just hours after a New York Times exposé alleged the world’s richest man had taken so much Ketamine during the 2024 presidential campaign that it affected his bladder.
Musk did little to calm those rumors as he turned up sporting a black eye (the result of mutual combat with his five-year-old son, he says), wearing a cap, a “Dogefather” t-shirt, and at one point rolling his head around to stare at the ceiling as the president spoke.
Sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Trump lauded his friend standing beside him for the savings he claimed to have made, which are almost certainly exaggerated.
“You know the kinds of things that he’s found, and his people have found… They found things that are pretty unbelievable. I have to say that the numbers that we’re talking about are substantial, but they’re going to be very much more substantial with time,” Trump said.
He praised the Tesla founder and CEO for delivering a “colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.”
Musk indeed shattered norms by ignoring outdated hiring practices that prize experience and expertise and instead placing 19-year-old hackers with nicknames like “Big Balls” in charge of government departments.
Or as President Trump put it: “DOGE has installed geniuses with an engineering mindset and unbelievably talented people in computers.”
The world’s richest person also broke new ground by becoming one of the most deadly bureaucrats in the history of the U.S. government, killing an estimated 15,000 people with his deep cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Trump could not have been more effusive in his praise, placing Musk’s four-month stint as a cost-cutting consultant in the ranks of America’s great heroes, somewhere between Miracle on the Hudson’s Sully Sullenberger and Captain America.
