Not even a full 24 hours after Elon Musk announced he was leaving Washington (with Stephen Miller’s wife in tow), the leaks have already sprung. He is of less use to the Beltway now, and so things that have long been known by insiders are now reaching the masses. The New York Times is out with a detailed report today titled, “On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama,” while The Washington Post has a story titled “SpaceX Starship failure casts further doubt on NASA’s moon landing timeline,” and Wired published a report on how “Republican Operatives Want to Distance Themselves From Elon Musk’s DOGE.”
It’s a bit reductive to boil this all down to Trump and GOP insiders finally talking shit about Musk on the record, as the Times has clearly been reporting this for a while. They note that the “account of his behavior is based on private messages obtained by The Times,” but it was also confirmed by “interviews with more than a dozen people who have known or worked with him.” When those people talked is anyone’s guess, but the publish date of this article is highly suggestive on its own.
The NYT report builds on the Wall Street Journal report from last year that Musk “has used illegal drugs, worrying leaders at Tesla and SpaceX,” and it goes into detail of his “erratic” behavior over the past year. The Times reports that “Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.”
The level of detail here is notable. The sources are close enough to Musk to be people he trusts to disclose health issues to, and they have even seen his medication. Maybe Elon just tells everyone about his bladder on the dance floor at Mar-a-Lago while flashing his Adderall around and asking if any women around him want his sperm, but this has echoes of the Drake-Kendrick beef, where Lamar’s Meet the Grahams cover art was a picture of Drake’s medication with his name on it, proving to Drake that he had a mole in his house. Unless Elon is very open about his personal life, and there is reason to doubt that given that we know he offered Ashley St. Clair $15 million and $100,000 per month until their son turned 21 to keep quiet about him, it seems likely this source(s) came from very close to Musk.
“I think people need to distance themselves from [DOGE],” said a Republican donor organizer and campaign adviser to Wired. They reported this person is “telling clients running for office—both new candidates and incumbents—to use Musk’s exit as a chance to distance themselves from the DOGE chainsaw.” Another “Republican with knowledge of the situation” told Wired that “everybody is in a bit of a fucking pinch,” over DOGE.
The Republicans Wired talked to don’t “believe that DOGE is going anywhere anytime soon,” which was confirmed by Trump on Truth Social, who wrote “this will be [Elon’s] last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way.” It’s very important to note that Musk is on a PR blitz right now, coming on the heels of Tesla reportedly looking for a new CEO per the WSJ and Musk denying the report that Tesla is getting really sick of his bullshit. Elon is saying he is returning to his companies likely because people on the boards said they will find someone else to do it if he won’t. Whether he actually does commit to his promises is a dubious prospect based on his entire professional life as a serial liar (full self-driving is totally just around the corner just like it was in 2015 when he promised it was going to happen!).
The last knife in Elon’s back as he supposedly walks out the door comes from a newspaper owned by SpaceX’s chief competitor. This one is different both in its nature (we all saw that rocket explode, just like all the others and we don’t need anonymous Republicans to tell us that), and how potentially sinister it is. The Wired article is mainly about people’s doubts and fears over DOGE really going away, and the NYT article is very clearly a combination of their reporters’ longtime reporting and some Republicans finally calling them back (and kudos to Kirsten Grind, Megan Twohey and their editor(s) for bucking the intentionally vague NYT style and calling a spade a spade when they wrote that Elon was “gesturing like a Nazi” at Trump’s inauguration).
The Washington Post’s article is filled with people named on the record who come from more scientific spaces talking about the ambitions and drawbacks of SpaceX. WaPo notes that Musk’s latest exploding rocket “comes at a delicate time for NASA and its moon program” as it tries to reach it by 2027. Mamta Patel Nagaraja, an aerospace consultant and former associate chief scientist for exploration at NASA, told them that “the fact that they actually go to space, that at least is progress. Now, does it change the timeline? Of course it’s going to push the timeline.”
Oh man, NASA is on a deadline that Shrooms McKetamine is unlikely to meet, who else could possibly replace this very specific and wildly expensive kind of business?? If only there was another giga-billionaire friendly with the Trump administration who is interested in sending Katy Perry to space!
While this WaPo article is much less juicy than the Times and Wired ones, it may be the most instructive of the current moment. Jeff Bezos has proven himself to be a sinister actor and so when an article that very clearly could help his Blue Origin business gets published in his newspaper, it’s difficult not to look at it as what Bezos would like it to be, and this seems to be his time to strike. That this comes amidst a backdrop of Republicans finally saying, ‘yeah Elon is a weirdo and it’s not just Scott Bessent who hates his guts,’ and it’s difficult to not look at it as part of a broader pattern, especially when sources close to the White House are telling Wired that “DOGE is popular, even if Elon, personally, is less so.” (Wired notes that “Polls show that DOGE is not popular with the public”)
Elon Musk has very clearly outlived his usefulness in Washington to some degree. His devastation to programs like USAID is estimated to have already killed 300,000 people, ensuring his spot in history as one of mankind’s great monsters. His slapdick and incoherent cuts across the government do resemble that of an acid trip, and it further reinforces the reports from the now avalanche of people talking to mainstream journalists about how he is reportedly a chronic drug addict, a serial liar, a deadbeat dad and an even worse husband. Elon Musk is a world-historic piece of shit, and it is no longer gauche in Republican circles to say so.
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