WEDNESDAY: Chait mentioned the Journal's report about Musk!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2025

We gave the report a look: Is something "wrong" with Elon Musk? Could something be clinically wrong?

We can't offer a clinical assessment. But in the realm of the colloquial, good God! 

Is there any bullsh*t this disordered man doesn't rush to affirm? Last Friday, at the Atlantic, Jonathan Chait offered this report on that general topic, dual headline included:

Paranoia Is Winning
How Elon Musk’s conspiracy theories became official White House policy

The Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate USAID is many things: an unfolding humanitarian nightmare, a rollback of American soft power, the thin end of a wedge meant to reorder the Constitution. But upon closer examination, it is also an outbreak of delusional paranoia that has spread from Elon Musk throughout the Republican Party’s rank and file.

Soon Musk declared that he had uncovered explosive evidence for this belief: The agency had funneled $8 million to Politico. Why exactly the Marxist plotters at USAID would select Politico as the vehicle for their scheme—its owner, the German media giant Axel Springer, has right-of-center politics with a strong pro-Israel tilt—has not been fully explained. But Musk’s discovery soon rocketed across X, the social-media platform he owns and uses promiscuously, and became official government policy.

“LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN [sic] AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS,” Trump wrote on his own social-media site, Truth Social. “THE LEFT WING ‘RAG,’ KNOWN AS ‘POLITICO,’ SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000 … THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!”

In fact, USAID has not given millions to Politico. The agency subscribed to E&E News by Politico, a premium service that provides detailed, fairly boring, and decidedly noncommunist coverage of energy and environmental policy...

In fact, USAID had "spent $24,000 on E&E subscriptions for its staff in 2024, and $20,000 the year before." According to Chait, that's less than $8 million per year. USAID had engaged in this conduct because its employees need to be well informed.

However it may have been intended, clinical language was sitting right there, right in Chait's opening paragraph.

An accusation of "delusional paranoia" can also be an example of colloquial language. But it's long past time for normal people to stop tolerating the recklessness—and the sheer stupidity—of the colloquial nutcase Musk.

In this instance, the recklessness and the stupidity jumped from one "nutcase" over to the other. And just for the record, no:

This idiocy didn't turn out to be THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY! As a simple matter of fact, it wasn't a scandal at all—and the whole fandango had been built, once again, on the blindingly dimwitted way Musk will promote any claim he has heard if he dumbly finds it pleasing.

People need to stop tolerating this man's disordered behavior. Journalists need to spend more time speaking more frankly about this big colloquial nut, while also saying the names of his flyweight enablers at places like the Fox News Channel.

Briefly, let's be fair. "World's richest persons" may sometimes end up saying the darndest things and behaving in reckless ways. If memory serves, Howard Hughes—another rich person—became a bit nutty himself. 

Reportedly, it can happen! That said, consider this:

Along the way, Chait cited a report we'd never read or perused. We have no idea what the ultimate truth might be, but here's what Chait reported:

The process by which Musk came to his conclusions does not inspire great confidence. His expertise lies mostly outside public policy. He arrived in Washington, D.C., and quickly set out to prove that he could identify at least $1 trillion in annual waste and fraud, a figure wildly out of scale with the conclusions of every serious expert. He claims to be working 120 hours a week, yet is posting on X at a manic pace, sending more than 3,000 tweets a month, at all hours of the night. Musk has acknowledged that he has a prescription for ketamine, a drug that can cause unpredictable behavior if abused. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that people close to Musk worry that his recreational drug use—including “LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms,” according to the article—was driving his erratic behavior and could adversely affect his businesses. (His attorney accused the Journal of printing “false facts,” and told the paper that Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”)

Unless we're mistaken, Musk had originally said or seemed to say that he could wring at last two trillion dollars out of the annual budget. That claim even more out of touch with basic reality than was the claim Chait cited. 

That said, there it sat—a citation of Musk's manic behavior, linked up with that report in the Wall Street Journal.

We repeat! The report (from January 2024) appeared in the Wall Street Journal, not in some Blue American vessel. The report was long and quite detailed. Dual headline included, this is the way it began:

Musk Has Used Illegal Drugs, Worrying Leaders at Tesla and SpaceX
Some executives and board members fear the billionaire’s use of drugs—including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine—could harm his companies

Elon Musk and his supporters offer several explanations for his contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics. They’re an expression of his creativity. Or the result of his mental-health challenges. Or fallout from his stress, or sleep deprivation.

In recent years, some executives and board members at his companies and others close to the billionaire have developed a persistent concern that there is another component driving his behavior: his use of drugs. 

And they fear the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive’s drug use could have major consequences not just for his health, but also the six companies and billions in assets he oversees, according to people familiar with Musk and the companies.

The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and [he] has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine. 

The report goes on and on from there, then it goes on some more. The report appeared in the Wall Street Journal, not in some bright blue locale.

We don't have the slightest idea what might be "wrong" with Musk. We do know that something is, in fact, unmistakably wrong with this manifest nutcase. We also know that the time is long past when people who are decent and sane should stop tolerating the clown shows staged by this overt nut.

Colloquially, Musk is an undisguised nut. So is his all-caps, nutcase commander.

These emperors are adorned in suits of see-through clothes.  The time has come when decent people need to stop being polite—journalistically deferential—about the stone-cold nuttiness driving this state of affairs.

"Something we were withholding made us weak?" We believe Robert Frost said that!