Inside Elon Musk’s shock-and-awe months in the White House

WASHINGTON—In the end, all it took to oust Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whom President Trump appointed in his first term, was a nudge from Elon Musk.

During a Friday meeting last month at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., club, Musk complained to the president that DeJoy was resisting his cost-cutting efforts at the U.S. Postal Service, according to people briefed on the conversation.

Trump had grown annoyed with DeJoy already, and wanted the postal service private and profitable, so he planned to fire him the following week, the people said. By Monday, DeJoy announced his resignation, effective immediately.

In the months since Trump took office, Musk has alienated some Trump aides with his chaotic approach to his role. Worried Republicans are concerned his unpopularity could cost them future elections, as it did in Wisconsin this week. Through it all, Musk has retained his status as among the most influential advisers in Trump’s White House—producing shock-and-awe, for a shock-and-awe president—and using his unpaid perch to reshape the federal bureaucracy, punish critics and serve as a key interlocutor to Trump.

Aides expect Musk to leave his formal White House post after his short-term assignment ends. Trump himself said this past week that Musk, who leads electric-vehicle maker Tesla and SpaceX, among other enterprises, eventually had to return to his companies. He is expected to remain an informal adviser and friend to Trump, White House officials say.

Trump staffers, worried about how Musk could become a political albatross, highlighted to Trump the extent to which the Wisconsin Supreme Court race—where a liberal judge won despite Musk and groups tied to him spending some $20 million to defeat her—became a contest about Musk.

But Musk has also helped Trump by absorbing criticism for government cuts and other politically unpopular moves that might otherwise be trained on Trump himself.

The president has tried to smooth over cracks in the relationship between Musk and the rest of his team. After an early March cabinet meeting, where several cabinet secretaries aired grievances about Musk, the president pulled aside chief of staff Susie Wiles and told her to improve relations between the agencies and the man he empowered to cut them.

Wiles needed to manage Musk, Trump said, making it clear that he backed Musk’s government-cutting zeal but sympathized with complaints from his cabinet. Wiles now has two long meetings a week with Musk, people briefed on the meetings said.

Trump was also unhappy when he learned in mid-March that Musk was scheduled to get a briefing on China and secret U.S. war plans at the Pentagon. Publicly, Trump dismissed the report as “fake news.” Privately, he called the potential briefing a conflict of interest given Tesla’s extensive operations in China and was frustrated he didn’t know about it in advance.

The two men could hardly be more different: Trump, 78 years old, is a consummate host, wants to be seen in coat and tie at almost all times, loves to play golf and has little interest in technology. Musk, 53, usually wears a T-shirt and hat—even in the White House—is awkward in conversation and has little interest in sports.

They nevertheless have forged a symbiotic bond. The two men speak daily, often many times, and Musk flits in and out of meetings in the West Wing and Oval Office, where he has walk-in privileges.

Trump has told others he finds Musk to be funny, that he appreciates both the world’s richest man’s wealth, and the interest other world leaders take in Musk. Members at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club say Musk is with Trump almost every weekend when the president is there. The two talk often about their skepticism toward many government agencies, their hatred of foreign aid and the need to deport illegal immigrants and close the U.S. border.

Senior White House officials are even reading a popular 2023 biography of Musk in an attempt to better understand him and his proclivities.

Trump brought Musk to the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia in late March, where Musk tried to explain his work to others at the event.

“I think they both think like athletes, and athletes hate losing,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) who was with the two men at the match.

Trump still sees Musk as another business leader who experienced the pain associated with going from being beloved to ridiculed, said people who have spent time around both of them.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called Musk a critical part of Trump’s team. “He’s doing a tremendous job cutting waste, fraud, and abuse from our federal government,” she said.

Shift to supporting Trump

While Trump’s political persona has changed little since 2016, Musk’s has changed a lot. That year, Musk said about Trump on CNBC: “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.“

As the 2024 campaign got under way, though, Musk became increasingly distrustful of Democrats. He repeatedly called Ronna McDaniel, who chaired the Republican National Committee at the time, to complain about the number of people surging across the border, and worried that the party needed to do more to ensure the election wasn’t stolen.

Last year, he said at a Palm Beach, Fla., breakfast that he wasn’t a Republican and had never voted for Trump—but that billionaires needed to back Trump to “save our country.” He went all in after Trump was shot in July at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, impressed with his heroism. He ultimately spent $300 million on November elections.

As hurricanes destroyed swaths of North Carolina, in October, Musk agreed to install SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service there, impressing Trump, who saw it as a political win for him. Musk pitched the Department of Government Efficiency to Trump, who promised him broad freedom.

Musk was involved in many of the administration’s hiring decisions, aides said.

Meanwhile, Trump has trusted Musk with some of the projects he is most interested in. He made Musk a key go-between with Boeing over its delayed new model of Air Force One, according to people familiar with the matter, with Musk demanding to speak to the planemaker’s engineers about the progress.

DOGE dividend

On a recent evening at Mar-a-Lago, Musk was on the patio near Trump, twirling silverware around on his pinkie as Trump entertained others.

Musk’s influence with Trump is partially powered by his close relationship with Stephen Miller, Trump’s domestic-policy adviser and the architect of the executive orders, and Miller’s wife, Katie, a special government employee who is viewed as one of Musk’s top aides. Katie Miller has been known to invoke Musk’s name and give orders liberally at the White House, to the consternation of other staffers skeptical of her status—like Musk’s—as an unpaid, temporary employee rather than a salaried one.

Musk has an office on the second floor of the White House, but the door is rarely opened, and the lights are never on, with Musk working across the street instead with lieutenants, White House officials said.

Republicans around the country have learned that Musk is sometimes the easiest way to get ideas in front of Trump. James Fishback, the head of investment firm Azoria, proposed on X a “DOGE dividend” where 20% of DOGE’s savings would be returned to taxpayers, and tagged Musk.

Within two hours Musk said he would share it with Trump, who endorsed the idea the next day at a Miami investment conference sponsored by the Saudi government.

Lobbyists say it is impossible to get on Musk’s calendar so they create campaigns hoping to reach him on X, in the hopes he might then share the material with Trump.

Musk also has a Trump-like tendency to absorb new information and then add his own spin to it, at times over-extrapolating. In late February, a DOGE aide called Musk at the conservative CPAC conference to say they had identified people who were listed in the Social Security database as being more than 120 years old, but didn’t say they had been issued inappropriate checks.

Musk told the aide to dig deeper, according to a person who heard the remarks.

Then he got on stage and riffed about how his team found that the Social Security databases included more than 400 million Americans were alive and eligible for the benefit—more than the current population of Americans of any age—and one person was shown as 360 years old. “Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s a red flag,” Musk said.

Trump later used the same information in his speech to Congress, even though some of his senior advisers were dubious of it. Trump’s aides have sought more information from Musk about the claims, hoping to substantiate some of them, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump’s senior aides and cabinet have grown frustrated with how Musk carries out his haphazard foreign-aid and other cuts, even if they broadly agree with his goals.

Senators also have started to privately complain. After Musk brandished a chain saw on stage at the CPAC conference to underscore his cuts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R, S.C.) told other Senate Republicans that he imagined that clip would be in every campaign commercial against vulnerable senators next year. A spokeswoman for Graham said he had worked closely with Musk on budget issues.

Musk’s antics surrounding his government cost-cutting efforts haven’t gone over well with all Republicans.

Trump has noted to advisers how popular it is to cut the government, and bragged that while other Republicans have promised to make such cuts, he is the only one who has done it.

Aboard Air Force One on Thursday, Trump told reporters that Musk is “fantastic,” but left room for his exit.

Musk will step back and return to running his businesses, Trump said. “There’s a point at which time Elon’s gotta have to leave,” he said, adding that time will come in “a few months.”

Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com, Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com