Musk, who had clashed in private with some Trump cabinet-level officials, initially pledged to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal government budget, before halving this target, then reducing it to $150bn.
An estimated 260,000 out of the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce have had their jobs cut or accepted redundancy deals as a result of Doge.
In some cases, federal judges blocked the mass firings and ordered terminated employees to be reinstated.
The rapid-fire approach to cutting the federal workforce occasionally led to some workers mistakenly being let go, including staff at the US nuclear programme.
Musk announced in late April that he would step back to run his companies again after becoming a lightning rod for criticism of Trump’s efforts to shake up Washington.
“Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the Washington Post in Texas on Tuesday ahead of a Space X launch.
“Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk’s time in government overlapped with a significant decline in sales at his electric car company.
