President Donald Trump will hold a news conference at the White House alongside Elon Musk on Friday to mark the departure of the world’s richest man from his official role leading an effort to slash the size and scope of the US government.

“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House,” Trump said in a Thursday night post on his Truth Social platform.

The event gives an opportunity for the president and his largest campaign benefactor to dispel any notion of an acrimonious divorce. In the past two weeks, Musk has sworn off future political donations and criticized Trump’s signature tax-and-spending-cut proposal, the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk said in an interview to be broadcast by CBS News this weekend, “but I don’t know if it can be both.”

He said that he was “disappointed” that the measure increased budget deficits and “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”

His comments seemed to echo the concerns of some Republicans in the House and Senate who believe the legislation costs too much and demand more spending reductions.

DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, was a Musk-driven effort to reduce the size of government. As a special government employee, he was limited to 130 days working for the federal government without having to divest his businesses. That deadline would be Friday if he worked for the White House every day since the inauguration.

But the 53-year-old billionaire had already announced he was pulling back from DOGE in order to spend more time running his various companies — most notably Tesla Inc., which has seen auto deliveries and its share price slump since December. The electric vehicle manufacturer has recovered about half the decline in its stock price since April 22, when Musk told investors that his time devoted to DOGE would “drop significantly.”

His full exit comes at a critical time for Tesla, which is set to roll out full self-driving cars and a robotaxi service in June. A rocket launched by SpaceX, another Musk venture, tumbled out of control and disintegrated in the atmosphere this week — the latest in a string of setbacks at that company. And xAI, newly merged with his social media company formerly known as Twitter, finds itself in a rapidly evolving competitive environment for artificial intelligence.

But for Trump, the departure also raises questions about the future of DOGE. The Musk brainchild was supposed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, but has vastly downgraded those ambitions. It now claims just $175 billion in savings — although only 42% of that is documented.

Still, the campaign to slash the size of the US government sent shockwaves through Washington, with some agencies eliminated outright and tens of thousands of federal workers purged or persuaded to accept buyouts. Congress now faces key decisions about whether to make those cuts permanent.

Musk’s top lieutenant at DOGE, Steve Davis, also departed on Thursday. Davis is the chief executive officer of the Boring Co., Musk’s tunnel construction business.