Beset by irreconcilable bureaucratic inertia and a chasm of unfulfilled fiscal consolidation targets, Elon Musk has elected to tender his resignation as a pre-eminent advisor to President Donald Trump; his fraught tenure, characterised by draconian personnel reductions, programmatic retrenchment, and protracted legal disputations, ultimately foundered upon the shoals of political expediency, as Musk's initial aspiration to excise $2 trillion from the federal ledger was successively attenuated to a mere $150 billion, precipitating escalating friction with fellow administration officials; this denouement, presaged by Musk's excoriation of Trump's legislative agenda, specifically a "massive spending bill" exacerbating the federal deficit, notwithstanding, the White House avows its intent to selectively implement elements of Musk's proposed austerity measures, even as Musk himself, profoundly disillusioned with the intractability of the federal leviathan, contemplates a strategic diminution of his future political outlays.