President Trump gifted outgoing adviser Elon Musk with a gold key to the White House on Friday, lauding his service in the administration.
“Elon gave an incredible service. There’s nobody like him, and he had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he’s an incredible patriot,” Trump said during an Oval Office presser, adding that Americans “appreciate” his work.
Throughout his tenure as a White House adviser and special government employee, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in seeking spending reductions, cuts to the federal workforce and closures of federal agencies.
As a result, protests across the country took place as people decried job losses and constrained access to services. Although the tech giant served for only 130 days, he said the mission of DOGE will continue amid his departure.
“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk told reporters.
“The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only go stronger,” Musk added. “It is permeating throughout the government, and I am confident that, over time, we will see a trillion dollars of savings and a reduction in — a trillion dollars of waste and fraud reduction.”
“DOGE has got a lot of work to do. And yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves,” he told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” in April. “But fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.
“And he’s done a lot of good things. People don’t realize how vast and uncontrolled the bureaucracy was,” the vice president continued. “We’ve started to chip away at it, but there’s a lot of work to do. It’s not going to happen all in six months, it’s going to take a long and committed effort.”
The president previously gifted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a gold key as reported in Jared Kushner’s memoir “Breaking History.” The total number of golden keepsakes gifted by the president is unknown.
