Elon Musk took a swipe at President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation, saying it would add to the national deficit. He complained to administration officials about a lucrative deal that went to a rival company to build an artificial-intelligence data center in the Middle East. And he has yet to make good on a $100 million pledge to Trump’s political operation.

Musk, who once called himself the president’s “first buddy,” is now operating with some distance from Trump as he says he is ending his government work to spend more time on his companies. Musk remains on good terms with Trump, according to White House officials. But he has also made it clear that he is disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he upended the federal bureaucracy, raising questions about the strength of the alliance between the president and the world’s richest man.

Musk was the biggest known political spender in the 2024 election, and he told Trump’s advisers this year that he would give $100 million to groups controlled by the president’s team before the 2026 midterms. As of this week, the money hasn’t come in yet, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the behindthe-scenes dynamic.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment. In a post on X, his social media site, on Wednesday night, he officially confirmed for the first time that his stint as a government employee was coming to an end and thanked Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”

“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added, referring to his Department of Government Efficiency team.

The billionaire’s imprint is still firmly felt in official Washington through that effort, an initiative to drastically cut spending that has deployed staff across the government. But Musk has said in recent days that he spent too much time focused on politics and has lamented the reputational damage he and his companies have suffered because of his work in the Trump administration.

“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk said in an interview this week with Ars Technica, a tech news outlet.

He added: “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

He also took a swipe at Trump’s allies in Congress, telling CBS News that he was “disappointed” by the domestic policy bill that the president championed and the House passed last week.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he said.

When asked by reporters about Musk’s criticisms Wednesday, Trump declined to respond directly. He defended the bill while acknowledging that he did not love every aspect of it, and he lauded Republicans’ efforts to move it forward. He did not once utter Musk’s name.

Before Trump’s trip to the Middle East this month, Musk objected to a deal in the works between a rival AI company and the United Arab Emirates to build a massive data center in Abu Dhabi, according to a White House official.

Musk joined the president on his trip through the Middle East, but Trump hardly mentioned his name publicly. And foreign officials in the Persian Gulf seemed more interested in seeking out Trump’s special envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, than they were in Musk.

On May 14, as a crowd of Trump’s wealthy supporters milled inside Qatar’s Lusail Palace before a dinner with the emir, Musk waited along with everyone else in the receiving line to shake Trump’s hand.

This week, Musk told The Washington Post that it was an “uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C.”

The cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his efforts, particularly on Capitol Hill, according to people familiar with his efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

For the first 90 days of the administration, some White House aides felt the administration was essentially held captive by Musk and his willingness to use X to target people he didn’t like. Musk had a direct pipeline to Trump and encouraged measures that some Cabinet officials opposed, such as forcing federal workers to send a weekly email listing their top five accomplishments or risk termination. (That requirement was lifted for civilian employees at the Defense Department this week.)

Musk kept Trump enthralled, until some of the headlines about DOGE’s work — and complaints from lawmakers and Cabinet officials — became hard to tune out. A rupture for the president, according to people with knowledge of his thinking, came when he learned from a New York Times report that Musk was about to receive a sensitive briefing on China at the Pentagon. Trump, who had repeatedly fended off questions about Musk’s potential conflicts of interest, was displeased, the people said.

Musk’s own disillusionment with national politics can be traced back to two recent events, according to people close to him: his frustrations with the president’s tariff regime and the roughly $25 million he spent backing a candidate who ended up losing a judicial bid in Wisconsin.

Last month, Musk told Tesla investors and analysts that he would cut his time on government matters to “a day or two per week,” and since then, he has made a concerted effort to show that he is reengaged at his companies.

“Back to spending 24/7 at work,” Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, posted on X on Saturday. “I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla.”