'Get back home to his cars': Musk gets abrupt 'farewell' from Trump in awkward exchange
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at the White House on April 30, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via MSNBC / YouTube)
Trump made a show of assuring billionaire Elon Musk that he’s always welcome, but MSNBC host Chris Jansing said the statement felt more like a "farewell than a directive to keep working."
“The vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate—this whole room can say that very strongly,” said Trump at a meeting with cabinet members. “He’s really been a tremendous help. He opened up a lot of eyes as to what could be done, and we just want to thank you very much.”
Trump added that “you're invited to stay as long as you want, but at some point, I guess he wants to get back home to his cars.”
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NBC reporter Garrett Haake, who described the meetings as “two hours of cabinet secretaries falling over each other to praise” Trump on various policies put into place over the first 100 days, correctly called Musk a “special government employee,” so he can not stay as long as he wants.
“He’s effectively term-limited in May … but he’ll probably be on the phone with cabinet officials and Trump “daily, if not slightly less often once he returns to the private sector.”
Musk is a controversial businessman behind massive federal layoffs that are now the seat of a lawsuit from a coalition of labor unions, nonprofits and local governments including Chicago, Baltimore and Harris County, Texas. Plaintiffs charge that actions taken by the president, Elon Musk and the heads of nearly two dozen federal agencies to dramatically downsize the federal workforce violate the Constitution because Congress has not authorized them.
The White House is also pushing the National Labor Relations Board to reduce organization staff, despite officials warning further cuts would imperil the agency's task of enforcing the federal law that protects workers’ right to freely form unions and take collective action to improve their working conditions. Its caseload has shot up in recent years as workers at companies like Starbucks Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. have tried to unionize.
The agency has been a target for Musk after the NLRB filed a complaint last year accusing Musk’s SpaceX of illegally firing workers who criticized Musk. The aerospace company filed a lawsuit arguing the labor board’s structure was unconstitutional, and SpaceX has denied wrongdoing.
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