Donald Trump held a farewell news conference for Elon Musk today, though the former president suggested the Tesla boss would not be departing entirely from his orbit. Despite the event being billed as a farewell, Trump indicated Musk's involvement would continue."Elon's really not leaving, he's going to be back and forth. It's his baby, he's going to be doing lots of things," Trump said during the conference.The remarks came as Musk prepares to step down from his role as a special government employee, though Trump's comments suggest ongoing collaboration between the two figures.Trump praised Musk as "one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced", commending him for "stepping forward to put his talents into our nation". Musk stood beside Trump, nodding along as the praise was delivered.The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive confirmed his departure in a post on X, stating his time as a special government employee is "coming to an end". In the same post, Musk wrote: "I would like to thank President [Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending." Rumours of a fallout occurred after Musk's recent criticism of Trump's spending bill, which the Tesla chief described as disappointing but the pair claimed today that Musk will still be advising the President "whenever he needs him." WATCH THE CLIP ABOVE FOR MORE
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00:00...named Elon, and he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced.
00:07He stepped forward to put his very great talents into the service of our nation, and we appreciate it.
00:14And I just want to say that Elon has worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.
00:23And you know the kinds of things that he's found and his people have found.
00:27He's brought a group of very smart people in, and they found things that are pretty unbelievable.
00:34I have to say that the numbers that we're talking about are substantial, but they're going to be very much more substantial with time,
00:41because many of the things that we're working on right now, we're going to have to remember Elon as we find them.
00:47But the numbers could double and triple, because many, many things, we don't want to go out with them until we're sure.
00:54But we've found things that are unbelievably stupid and unbelievably bad.
01:00With the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon's delivered a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.
01:07Doge has installed geniuses with an engineering mindset and unbelievably talented people and computers.
01:14I actually asked Elon one time, what's their primary thing, and they have a lot of primary things, all having to do with being smart.
01:21But he said the thing that they're really the best at is working with computers, so that they can't be outsmarted by somebody that's not so honest,
01:30that happens to also be good with computers, but not as good as these people.
01:34But the mindset and the senior ranks of every federal department, it's really changed.
01:40And with Elon's guidance, they're helping to detect fraud slash waste and modernize broken and outdated systems.
01:47So, as you know, we're talking about various systems and changing systems.
01:51And, you know, sadly, it takes a long time to do that.
01:54But you'll change, let's say, a system at IRS and computerize it properly, where the job can be done in one-tenth a time.
02:02But it takes sometimes years to rebuild those systems.
02:07But we've started.
02:08In many cases, we've started.
02:09I will say that this has less to do with Elon.
02:12But the air traffic control systems, we're bidding out to the best companies in the world, those systems right now.
02:19The previous administration was horrible, what they did.
02:24They spent billions and billions of dollars.
02:27And in the end, it didn't even come close to working.
02:30They tried to hook up wire to copper, and it can't be done.
02:34And they just spent billions of dollars and just wasted money.
02:38Actually made the system much worse.
02:40So we're going to get a brand new modern system.
02:42Congress is working with us on that.
02:44And we're going to get it done as quickly as we can.