Trump conducts the weirdest exit interview in historical past as Musk departs the White House — for now | EUROtoday

Elon Musk’s exit interview started like some other.

The boss heaped reward on the departing worker whereas demonstrating a tenuous grasp of precisely what it’s he did. The worker vastly inflated his achievements, and the pair made obscure guarantees to remain in contact.

From there, it veered right into a freewheeling dialogue about transgender mice, Musk’s alleged prolific use of horse tranquilizer, nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan, and a possible pardon for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, ought to he be convicted.

Now that Musk’s legally restricted 130-day time period as a “special government employee” is over, probably the most damaging skilled partnership since Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader shacked up within the Death Star has lastly come to an finish.

Trump and Musk, the highly effective bromance that shook the world, are taking a break — for now at the least.

The hour-long farewell, in entrance of the world’s press, got here simply hours after a New York Times exposé alleged the world’s richest man had taken a lot Ketamine throughout the 2024 presidential marketing campaign that it affected his bladder.

Musk did little to calm these rumors as he turned up sporting a black eye (the results of mutual fight together with his five-year-old son, he says), sporting a cap, a “Dogefather” t-shirt, and at one level rolling his head round to stare on the ceiling because the president spoke.

Sitting on the Resolute Desk within the Oval Office, Trump lauded his good friend standing beside him for the financial savings he claimed to have made, that are nearly actually exaggerated.

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“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 mentioned.

He praised the Tesla founder and CEO for delivering a “colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.”

Musk certainly shattered norms by ignoring outdated hiring practices that prize expertise and experience and as an alternative putting 19-year-old hackers with nicknames like “Big Balls” in control of authorities 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 particular person additionally broke new floor by turning into one of the crucial lethal bureaucrats within the historical past of the U.S. authorities, killing an estimated 15,000 individuals together with his deep cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Trump couldn’t have been extra effusive in his reward, putting Musk’s four-month stint as a cost-cutting marketing consultant within the ranks of America’s nice heroes, someplace between Miracle on the Hudson’s Sully Sullenberger and Captain America.

“Elon’s service to America has been without comparison in modern history,” Trump said, noting the huge sacrifice Musk had made by having to endure people being mean to him online.

“He willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks, because he does love our country,” Trump went on.

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Anyone hoping for an end to the friendship that ended thousands of government careers would be sorely disappointed.

“Elon is really not leaving,” Trump said. “He’s going to be back and forth, I have a feeling. It’s his baby, and I think he’s going to be doing a lot of things.”

Musk agreed.

“I anticipate to proceed to supply recommendation, regardless of the President would really like recommendation… I anticipate to stay a good friend and an advisor, and definitely, if there’s something the President needs me to do, I’m on the President’s service,” he said.

But for now, Musk is returning to his many businesses, which are all simultaneously suffering from significant brand damage due to their association with him.

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In one particularly awkward moment, Musk batted away a question from a journalist concerning Friday’s published allegations about his drug use, which reportedly included Ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms and Adderall, in addition to ketamine.

“Is the New York Times — is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate? Is that the same organization? I think it is,” he said, theatrically turning to Trump. “I think it is.”

But Musk couldn’t leave without first reeling off a list of excuses for why he didn’t achieve what he set out to do. He claimed he could cut $1 trillion from the federal budget before September 30 by ending “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but now even his own likely cooked numbers have failed to meet that target.

“Obviously, at times, when you cut expenses, those who are receiving the money, whether they receive whether they’re receiving that money legitimately or not, they do complain, and you’re not going to hear someone confessing that they receive money inappropriately. Never,” he said.

He even saw fit to appropriate Hannah Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” quote to attract a weird comparability with authorities spending and Nazi Germany.

“It’s the banal evil of bureaucracy. It’s sort of the frankly, largely uncaring nature of bureaucracy,” he went on.

And maybe extra ominously for anybody who depends on USAID for his or her lifesaving HIV medicine, or anybody with a job within the U.S. authorities, or anybody who wants authorities healthcare to outlive, Musk promised that his mission would proceed.

“The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time, the DOGE influence will only grow stronger. I liken it to a sort of Buddhism, it’s like a way of life,” he mentioned, demonstrating a transparent lack of knowledge about Buddhism and life.

In different phrases, this Rasputin for the McKinsey age shouldn’t be going anyplace.