In a bombshell interview with Axios on HBO released late Monday night, Elon Musk broke his silence and torched the very institution he once tried to reform. With a look of exhaustion and fury behind his trademark intensity, the billionaire tech mogul declared that he is “completely done” with Washington, calling his time as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “the most calculated trap of my entire career.”

Musk, who was tapped by President Trump in early 2023 to lead the newly established federal department aimed at reducing waste and modernizing bureaucracies, now says the entire project was a setup—and he was its primary pawn.

“I didn’t reform the system. The system reformed me—into a scapegoat,” Musk said, pausing before adding, “a whipping boy, really.”

Used, Mocked, and Blamed for Everything

According to Musk, he walked into DOGE with optimism. “I thought: great, here’s a chance to bring lean innovation and logic to the most bloated machine on Earth. I thought Trump actually wanted change,” he said. “But instead, I became the fall guy for every mess they didn’t want to own.”

Musk claims that over the last year, DOGE was blamed for everything from Medicaid payment glitches to failures in FEMA response—even when the agency had zero jurisdiction over those issues.

“Didn’t matter,” he shrugged. “If something went wrong? Blame DOGE. And by extension—blame me.”

He said he was constantly left out of key budget meetings, ignored in policy discussions, and publicly praised while privately mocked. “I was the mascot. The nerdy outsider. The guy they could all point to and say, ‘See, we brought in Elon!’ But they never actually listened to a damn thing I said.”

The Email That Changed Everything

The tipping point came last Friday morning, Musk revealed, when he received a cryptic email from a senior White House aide regarding Trump’s highly controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill”—a massive spending package poised to increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion.

The email, Musk said, was only eight words long.

“We need you to sell this. Smile. Today.”

“That’s when it hit me,” he said, jaw clenching. “That wasn’t a request. That was a command. A final insult. After months of sabotaging my reforms, they wanted me to play cheerleader for a bill that would erase everything I worked for.”

Musk said he stared at the email for a full ten minutes, then stood up, walked out of the DOGE headquarters in downtown D.C., and hasn’t returned since.

“I haven’t responded. I won’t,” he said. “That email was my wake-up call. I was never here to fix anything. I was here to smile for the camera while they tore the country apart behind the scenes.”

Fallout and Finger-Pointing

The White House has not officially responded to Musk’s remarks, but anonymous staffers have begun leaking counter-narratives to the press, calling Musk “erratic,” “thin-skinned,” and “never really serious about governance.”

But many close to Musk say the opposite is true. “He bent over backwards for them,” said one former DOGE deputy who resigned last month. “He cut departments. He eliminated bloated software contracts. He saved them billions. And they spit in his face.”

The admission has ignited a storm online, with Musk’s supporters demanding answers and using the hashtag #DOGEwasaTrap to trend globally on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter and now owned by Musk.

Conservative commentators are split. Some are accusing Musk of betrayal, while others are quietly acknowledging what many in Washington feared: that DOGE was a gimmick from the start—one designed to generate headlines, not results.

What’s Next for Musk?

For now, Musk says he’s retreating back to what he knows: engineering, rockets, and AI.

“I’m going back to Mars. Literally,” he quipped. “At least the bureaucracy on the Red Planet hasn’t started yet.”

But he didn’t rule out future involvement in politics—on his own terms.

“I still care about this country,” he said. “But if I ever come back to Washington, it won’t be as someone’s puppet. I’ll come with my own scissors, and this time, I’ll be the one cutting strings.”

As he walked off camera, Musk added one final sentence without turning around:

“They thought I was the tool—but I was the warning.”