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WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk bade farewell to Donald Trump in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance Friday, sporting a black eye, brushing aside drug abuse claims and vowing to stay a “friend and adviser” to the US president.

As the world’s richest person bowed out of his role as Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief, the Republican hailed Musk’s “incredible service” and handed him a golden key to the White House.

But Trump insisted that Musk was “really not leaving” after a turbulent four months in which his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut tens of thousands of jobs, shuttered whole agencies and slashed foreign aid.

“He’s going to be back and forth,” said Trump, showering praise on the tech tycoon for what he called the “most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.”

South-African born Musk, wearing a black T-shirt with the word “Dogefather” in white lettering and a black DOGE baseball cap, said many of the $1 trillion savings he promised would take time to bear fruit.

“I look forward to continuing to be a friend and adviser to the president,” he said.

But many people were more interested in the livid black bruise around Musk’s right eye.

Speculation about the cause was further fueled by accusations in the New York Times Friday that Musk used so much of the drug ketamine on the 2024 campaign trail that he developed bladder problems.

‘Go ahead punch me in the face’

The SpaceX and Tesla magnate said that his son was to blame for the injury.

“I was just horsing around with lil’ X, and I said, ‘go ahead punch me in the face,’” 53-year-old Musk said. “And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually is...” he added, before tailing off.

Musk, however, dodged a question about the drug allegations.

The New York Times said Musk, the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign, also took ecstasy and psychoactive mushrooms and traveled with a pill box last year.

Musk, who has long railed against the news media and championed his X social media platform as an alternative, took aim at the paper instead.

“Is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate?” said Musk, referring to claims that Trump’s 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow.

“Let’s move on. Okay. Next question.”

Later in the day, when a reporter asked Trump if he was “aware of Elon Musk’s regular drug use,” Trump simply responded: “I wasn’t.”

“I think Elon is a fantastic guy,” he added.

The White House had earlier played down the report.

“The drugs that we’re concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border” from Mexico, said Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, whose wife works for Musk.

Musk has previously admitted to taking ketamine, saying he was prescribed it to treat a “negative frame of mind” and suggesting his use of drugs benefited his work.

Leaving under a cloud

The latest in a series of made-for-TV Oval Office events was aimed at putting a positive spin on Musk’s departure.

Musk is leaving Trump’s administration under a cloud, after admitting disillusionment with his role and criticizing the Republican president’s spending plans.

It was a far cry from his first few weeks as Trump’s chainsaw-brandishing sidekick.

At one time Musk was almost inseparable from Trump, glued to his side on Air Force One, Marine One, in the White House and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The right-wing magnate’s DOGE led an ideologically-driven rampage through the federal government, with its young “tech bros” slashing tens of thousands of jobs.

But DOGE’s achievements fell far short of Musk’s original goal of saving $2 trillion dollars.

The White House says DOGE has made $170 billion in savings so far. The independent “Doge Tracker” site has counted just $12 billion while the Atlantic magazine put it far lower, at $2 billion.

Musk’s “move fast and break things” mantra was also at odds with some of his cabinet colleagues, and he said earlier this week that he was “disappointed” in Trump’s planned mega tax and spending bill as it undermined DOGE’s cuts.

Musk’s companies, meanwhile, have suffered.

Tesla shareholders called for him to return to work as sales slumped and protests targeted the electric vehicle maker, while SpaceX had a series of fiery rocket failures.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has slashed US aid and vowed a major rethink on helping the world. A controversial effort to bring food to Gaza may offer clues on what’s to come.
Administered by contracted US security with Israeli troops at the perimeter, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation  is distributing food through several hubs in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
An officially private effort with opaque funding, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for over two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
The organization said it had distributed 2.1 million meals as of Friday.
The initiative excludes the UN, which has long coordinated aid distribution in the war-ravaged territory and has infrastructure and systems in place to deliver assistance on a large scale.
The UN and other major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF, saying it violates basic humanitarian principles, and appears crafted to cater to Israeli military objectives.
“What we have seen is chaotic, it’s tragic and it’s resulted in hundreds of thousands of people scrambling in an incredibly undignified and unsafe way to access a tiny trickle of aid,” said Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president of international programs at the International Rescue Committee .
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his aid group stopped work in Gaza in 2015 when Hamas militants invaded its office and that it refused to cooperate in Syria when former strongman Bashar Assad was pressuring opposition-held areas by withholding food.
“Why on earth would we be willing to let the Israeli military decide how, where and to whom we give our aid as part of their military strategy to herd people around Gaza?” said Egeland.
“It’s a violation of everything we stand for. It is the biggest and reddest line there is that we cannot cross.”
The UN said that 47 people were injured Tuesday when hungry and desperate crowds rushed a GHF site — most of them by Israeli gunfire — while a Palestinian medical source said at least one person had died.
The Israeli military denied its soldiers fired on civilians and the GHF denied any injuries or deaths.
Israel has relentlessly attacked Gaza since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel has vowed to sideline the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, accusing it of bias and of harboring Hamas militants.
UNRWA said that nine out of thousands of staff may have been involved in the October 7 attack and dismissed them, but accuses Israel of trying to throw a distraction.
John Hannah, a former senior US policymaker who led a study last year that gave birth to the concepts behind the GHF, said the UN seemed to be “completely lacking in self-reflection” on the need for a new approach to aid after Hamas built a “terror kingdom.”
“I fear that people could be on the brink of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good instead of figuring out how do we take part in this effort, improve it, make it better, scale it up,” said Hannah, who is not involved in implementing the GHF.
Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, defended the use of private contractors, saying that many had extensive Middle East experience from the US-led “war on terror.”
“We would have been happy if there were volunteers from  capable and trusted national forces... but the fact is, nobody’s volunteering,” he said.
He said he would rather that aid workers coordinate with Israel than Hamas.
“Inevitably, any humanitarian effort in a war zone has to make some compromises with a ruling authority that carries the guns,” he said.
Hannah’s study had discouraged a major Israeli role in humanitarian work in Gaza, urging instead involvement by Arab states to bring greater legitimacy.
Arab states have balked at supporting US efforts as Israel pounds Gaza and after Trump mused about forcibly displacing the whole Gaza population and constructing luxury hotels.
Israel and Hamas are negotiating a new Gaza ceasefire that could see a resumption of UN-backed efforts.
Aid groups say they have vast amounts of aid ready for Gaza that remain blocked.
Donnelly said the IRC had 27 tons of supplies waiting to enter Gaza, faulting the GHF for distributing items like pasta and tinned fish that require cooking supplies — not therapeutic food and treatment for malnourished children.
He called for distributing relief in communities where people need it, instead of through militarized hubs.
“If anyone really cares about distributing aid in a transparent, accountable, effective way, the way to do that is to use the expertise and infrastructure of aid organizations that have been doing this for decades,” Donnelly said.