Elon Musk has reportedly told people he’s been sleeping in his Washington, D.C. government office, where he’s working to build Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The DOGE office is housed inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, roughly four minutes from the West Wing on foot. According to Wired, Musk told friends at a black tie event last week that he’d been invited to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom inside the White House itself.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder has become especially close to President Trump since spending more than $250 million to help get the Republican leader get reelected. Musk’s net worth jumped 77% after Trump won the presidency for a second time, according to Bloomberg. He’s believed to be worth $400 billion, making Musk by far the world’s richest person.
Prior to Trump’s inauguration last week, Musk had reportedly been taking up residency in a $2,000-a-day cottage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate before following his “First Buddy” to the nation’s capital. It’s unclear who picked up that tab.
While Musk could surely afford his own apartment in Washington, the 53-year-old entrepreneur has a history of sleeping where he works. He said in a 2002 interview that he spent three years sleeping either on a rooftop sofa or under his desk so his Tesla factory employees could be sure to see him every time they came to work.
“They knew I was there and that made a huge difference, and then they gave it their all,” he said, saying it was important to him that his employees didn’t think he was “off somewhere having a good time, drinking Mai Tais on a tropical island.”
According to Musk his workplace was his “primary residence” during that period.
Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped in November to co-lead DOGE as an unofficial agency designed to slash government spending. However, Ramaswamy left DOGE earlier this month and now hopes to run for governor of Ohio.
The idea of DOGE was mocked from the start by critics including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who joked on X that forming a new agency headed by “two people to do the work of one person” seemed “REALLY” efficient.
Musk countered by claiming neither he nor Ramaswamy would be paid for their work.
