TRUST: He hailed from our neighbor to the north....

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2025

...where he had some peculiar ideas: As we noted yesterday, Johnny Carson was one of the first to pose the important question. In fairness, his wording was slightly off:

Who Do You Trust?

Who Do You Trust? [was] an American television game show.

...[T]he show premiered in prime time on CBS in January 1956 and was hosted by Edgar Bergen. The show lasted in this form until March 1957. In September of that year, the show was revamped as a daytime program, and Johnny Carson was installed as host. 

The show was the start of Carson's career on network TV. His next stop was the Tonight show.

"Who Do You Trust?" was the name of that show. Our question is slightly different. All this week, we're asking these questions. 

Who can an American citizen trust? As a citizen, who should you trust?

"Trust but verify," President Reagan famously said. He was speaking about the Soviet Union, but the advice is quite good here at home.

In theory, no public official, journalist or professor should ever be trusted completely. But at some point, a citizen has to make a basic general assessment:

As a general matter, who can you pretty much trust? A corollary question might go like this:

Who can't you trust in any way? Who can't you sensibly trust at all?

For the record, we're speaking here about trusting someone's overall judgment—about trusting some public figure's intellect, wisdom, honesty. For today, we'll let ourselves focus on one public figure:

Should you trust—can a sensible person trust—the judgment of Elon Musk?

Musk is—and Musk has been—a very important person. Forget his current performance at DOGE. All the way back in 2021, Time magazine hailed him as its Person of the Year.

The sponge bath started as shown:

Elon Musk: 2021 TIME Person of the Year

The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune. He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops.

That was the start of the fluff-infested fiddle-faddle about this swinger of birches. Please don't blame the journalists for this (Ball, Kluger and de la Garza). That's the type of silliness their editors demand in such essays.

That said, riddle us one peculiar disclosure. With apologies for the inanity, Time magazine's Person of the Year "likes to live-tweet his poops?"

Quickly, the journalists supported their surprising claim. before resuming their lionization. Also, the journalists reported that Musk had only been doing that "lately."  

Still, however accomplished this person may be in several technological / entreprenurial areas, can you actually trust that guy? Can you trust his overall judgment?

That was December 2021. Joe Biden sat in the White House. The pandemic had largely relented.

Now we're engaged in a great civil war, and the fellow who had "recently been selling off his fortune" has become a major political / policy player. In that role, he keeps saying the darnedest things. Can sensible people trust a person who says—or suggests or implies or seems to suggest—such peculiar things as these?

Apparent claims by Musk:
Something approaching twenty million people over the age of 120 are being sent monthly checks by the Social Security Administration.

The federal government paid (or perhaps was only "charged") a billion dollars for "a simple online survey" which should have cost $10,000. "Mind-blowing," the gentleman said.

Thanks to the intervention of DOGE, the White House stopped USAID from sending $50 million worth of condoms to the Gaza Strip—presumably, to Hamas.

Most recently, we'll cite his claim about all the immigrants with all the Social Security numbers. For Poynter's April 4 debunking of this claim, click here for this report:

Immigrants can get Social Security numbers legally. Musk says that’s ‘crazy’

Billionaire businessman and White House adviser Elon Musk and his colleague, venture capitalist Antonio Gracias, said they uncovered “crazy” information about Social Security and immigrants.

“This is a mind-blowing chart,” Musk said at a March 30 campaign event for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, pointing to data that showed the number of noncitizens who received Social Security numbers from 2021 to 2024. The chart showed a jump from about 270,000 in fiscal year 2021 to more than 2 million in fiscal year 2024.

“This literally blew us away, like we went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident,” said Gracias, who has been working with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Gracias thanked government workers who he said “took a risk to show us these numbers.”

Both men portrayed the data as nefarious and previously unknown.

Gracias’ remarks gave the false impression that all noncitizens who received Social Security numbers during that timeframe are in the U.S. illegally and receiving federal benefits. He said, without presenting evidence, that the 5.5 million people represented in the chart received Social Security numbers after illegally crossing the border, applying for asylum and receiving a work permit. He added that those people were receiving Social Security benefits and some were registered to vote and had voted. (Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections.)

Musk also tied the data to his false claim that former President Joe Biden’s administration had a “large scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States.” We previously rated that Pants on Fire!

But this data is neither nefarious nor secretive. It’s evidence of the Social Security system working as intended by law.

The fact-check continues from there, and there is no paywall. That said, Whatever! For whatever reason, this sems to be the peculiar way this Person of the Year tends to play.

For whatever reason, such statements, insinuations and suggestions seem to emerge from Musk like the traditional "showers of rain." So does the endless name-calling, along with the endless "puerile expressions" (Time), such as the tweeting of bowel movements.

So how about it? Can a sensible citizen trust the person in question? Musk is highly accomplished in certain technological areas. But should citizens trust his various statements about political matters? Should we the people trust his various assessments?

Should citizens trust the sayings of DOGEmaster Musk? We think the answer is blindingly obvious. Millions of people disagree with our assessment—and the major organs of Blue America are largely taking a pass on this important question.

That said, a guest essay in Sunday's New York Times traced the history of some of Musk's apparent ideas. The essay was written by Jill Lepore, the Harvard history/law professor. It appeared beneath this headline:

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk

In her fascinating essay, Professor Lepore tracks those "failed ideas" back a full century, just past the onset of the Great Depression. Remarkably, the peculiar ideas can even be said to track back to Musk's maternal grandfather!

With that, an immediate disclaimer:

Thee's little reason to believe that Musk was directly influenced by the person in question. Hs maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, died at the age of 75 when Musk was just three years old.

That said, the "failed ideas" are very strange, though they're strange ideas of a certain type. Also, they seem to run all through the peculiar behavior of Musk himself. To offer a bit of instant background, here's a quick thumbnail concerning his rather unusual grandfather:

Joshua N. Haldeman

Joshua Norman Haldeman (1902-1974) was an American-born Canadian-South African chiropractor, aviator, and politician. He became involved in Canadian politics, backing the technocracy movement, before moving to South Africa in 1950. Over the course of decades, he repeatedly expressed racist, antisemitic, and antidemocratic views. In South Africa he was a supporter of apartheid and promoted a number of conspiracy theories. A pilot since 1948, he died in a plane crash in 1974. Haldeman is the maternal grandfather of businessman Elon Musk.

[..]

In 1950, he emigrated with his family to South Africa and settled in the capital Pretoria, where he opened a chiropractic clinic. He served as secretary of the South African Chiropractors Association from 1952 to 1959, after which he was its president until 1969.

That's a rather unflattering thumbnail. In her essay, Professor Lepore focuses on the long-forgotten "technocracy movement," with its substantial array of peculiar behaviors and bizarre ideas.

Tomorrow, we'll scroll through Lepore's recollection about the technocracy movement, which was briefly influential. In the main, one key point will prevail:

People with substantial technological abilities may be borderline nuts about pretty much everything else. Their overall judgement may be remarkably poor. This is an important framework within which the American citizen might consider the behaviors of Musk.

Haldeman hailed from our neighbor to the north. He had many peculiar ideas.

Arrested in Canada, he eventually decamped to the south. He emigrated to South Africa, where his highly influential grandson was born.

Who can we the people trust? Should we trust the various claims of Elon Musk? 

Tomorrow: People who are highly accomplished may believe the darnedest things!