Even the brightest of flames are bound to sputter out eventually, and lo, it would appear that the bright, brief bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump will soon be but a wisp of smoke, quickly dissipated to nothing in the White House’s climate-controlled corridors.
In a group interview with a handful of reporters at the White House on Wednesday evening, Musk spent some time reminiscing on the soon-to-be good ole’ DOGE days, whining about his office, garnished with a healthy misunderstanding of Buddhism, just for variety.
Musk explained that the administration is “getting more of a rhythm,” 100 days post-inauguration. Sure, if by “rhythm” he means “plummeting poll numbers and stock market,” then, yes, there has indeed been more of that. Musk said that he’d step back from DOGEing and playing video games Diablo and Path of Exile in his office on a monitor that he described as the biggest in the White House. By contrast, he sniffed that his office is “comically tiny” with “a view of nothing.”
“Which is fine, makes it harder to shoot me,” Musk added. “Not a good line of sight.”
It would appear that his days of sleeping in that office are over, however, due to an upgrade in guest lodgings: Trump frequently invites him to stay over at the White House, where he sleeps in the Lincoln Bedroom and enjoys cute little ice cream rendezvous with Trump.
“We’ll be on Air Force One, and Marine One, and he’ll be like, ‘Do you want to stay over?’” Musk said of “good friend” Trump. “And I’m like, ‘sure.’ He’ll actually call, like late at night, and say, like, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you get some ice cream from the kitchen.’”
“Don’t tell RFK,” he added, invoking health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Musk, for the record, tends to enjoy caramel-flavored Haagen Dazs. Trump has historically voiced a preference for cherry-vanilla ice cream, with very specific instructions for how it should be served: Two scoops for Donald, one for everyone else. (It’s worth noting, too, that Trump Tower in New York has its own ice cream shop. A “big league” scoop costs $8, and it is the proud bearer of a 2.6-star Yelp rating.)
As he shifts his focus from DOGE to “return to primarily running my companies, which do need me,” (read: Tesla’s profits declined an eye-popping 71% in Q1, and the vehicles have become a scarlet letter among anti-Trumpers), Musk graded his time playing government dress-up as “60% fun, 70% fun,” though it “depends on the week.”
“Being attacked relentlessly is not super fun,” he said. “Seeing cars burning is not fun.”
Weird news for Elon: Those things are not exclusive to….whatever it was he did at DOGE. Remember, the mysterious Amy Gleason was publicly named as the group’s acting administrator in February, though Musk was out front wearing goofy hats and trying to fire people who didn’t work for him. He’s keeping his office, tiny though it may be, he said, and apparently his sparse business cards as well. Even his stationery doesn’t know what to call him, by the way.
“They don’t put anything on my card,” Musk said. “Literally, there’s nothing on my card. It just says my name.” Useful!
Just as he has perpetually declined to say who’s actually running the show at DOGE (and, honestly, what the hell they’re all doing there), Musk kept mum on the future.
“It’s a way of life, like Buddhism,” he said of DOGE, which, as a weird vague government committee has pretty much nothing in common with the centuries-old belief system. “You wouldn’t ask who would lead Buddhism. Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?”
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