'I am NOT taking drugs!' Elon Musk denies damning report
Elon Musk has denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the 2024 campaign trail.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the billionaire adviser to President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems.
The newspaper said the world's richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January.
In a post on Saturday on X, Musk said: 'To be clear, I am NOT taking drugs! The New York Times was lying their ass off.'
He added: 'I tried 'prescription' ketamine a few years ago and said so on X, so this not even news. It helps for getting out of dark mental holes, but haven't taken it since then.'
Elon Musk first dodged a question about his drug use at a bizarre farewell appearance on Friday with Trump in the Oval Office in which the Tesla and SpaceX boss sported a noticeable black eye as he formally ended his role as Trump's main cost-cutter at DOGE, which fired tens of thousands of civil servants.
News of the injury drew substantial attention as it came right after the Times report on his alleged drug use. The daily recalled erratic behavior such as Musk giving an enthusiastic Nazi-style salute in January of this year at a rally celebrating Trump's inauguration.
Musk said he got the injury while horsing around with his young son, named X, when he told the child to hit him in the face.
'And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually is…' he added, before tailing off.
Later on Friday, when a reporter asked Trump if he was aware of Musk's 'regular drug use,' Trump responded: 'I wasn't.'
'I think Elon is a fantastic guy,' he added.
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.
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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
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Daily Maverick
2 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
In this era of spyware, Parliament must codify safeguards in surveillance law
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The original bill passed by Parliament failed to remedy all constitutional flaws, so President Cyril Ramaphosa refused to assent and referred it back to Parliament. As the DA's Werner Horn predicted in 2023, 'the idea of a future wholesale review was a way of delaying the process which was likely to take years'. Considering the proliferation of sophisticated surveillance technologies such as spyware, South Africa has a unique opportunity to implement a meaningful surveillance safeguard that can serve as a model regionally and globally by fixing the flaws in the Rica Bill. This article explains how South Africa can achieve it. Indefinite suspension of notification keeps surveillance secret and grants permanent impunity The first flaw in the Rica Bill is the weak notification system. The introduction of a mandatory notification to surveillance subjects within 90 days of warrant expiration is a positive step; however, the implementation will probably fail. It allows suspension under vague conditions, i.e. whenever a court finds notification 'has the potential to negatively impact national security' for any period the court deems appropriate. Without clear limitations, suspension will be granted in many more cases for much longer than necessary (as found by the European Court of Human Rights in Bulgaria's notification system). Such a broad notification suspension makes accountability and remedy virtually impossible. Consider the case of journalist Sam Sole, a director of the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, who was the plaintiff of the 2021 Constitutional Court case. Like many other targets Sole suspected he was being monitored, but lacked proof. That evidence emerged by good fortune when official intercept extracts were included in documents in another case. Sole's case is far from rare. Right2Know reports case studies where journalists only found out about the surveillance on them 'through accident, coincidence, or via a confidential source — without which it would be impossible to get any recourse'. If surveillance evidence is used in a criminal case, the subject may challenge its legality, but such cases are rare in practice. The Rica Bill does little to change the status quo, leaving the situation where, in Jacques Pauw's words, journalists 'can't do anything' with '(their) phone and emails (being) monitored'. The prospect becomes even more concerning when we consider the persistent instability the intelligence community has faced since 1994. This organisational weakness has been a root cause of surveillance abuse, notably identified by the 2018 Presidential High-Level Review Panel and the 2009 Commission of Inquiry. Yet, while the president-led reforms have led to some positive changes, they remain incomplete. 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Notably, the European Court of Human Rights (e.g. in 2024 and 2022), and the European Court of Justice repeatedly clarified that notification must be provided to the surveillance subjects as soon as it can be made without jeopardising the purpose of surveillance. However, the current Rica Bill stands in contrast. It is doubtful that, without a clear condition and upper limit on suspension, notification would be issued immediately after the threat abates. Another problem with the notification system under the Rica Bill is its silence on what should be notified. To ensure access to remedy, the notification must include sufficient information so the surveillance subject could substantiate a claim to have the legality of the surveillance reviewed by a competent body. This, at a minimum, includes details such as who sought and conducted the surveillance, why and when it was done, and what information was obtained. 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Moreover, any rehoming of the old-style metal-bashing industrial base is not likely to occur for years — if ever — especially if businesses cannot figure out what the tariffs and investment subsidy policies will be in the future, and with their effects on complex, globe-straddling supply chains. All this mishmash of messaging doesn't include discussions about Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'. This is the massive tax and budget bill that would, if passed by the Senate after its passage by the House of Representatives with one vote to spare, eviscerate yet more of the government's programmes, offices and functions, as well as skewing tax cuts to the rich. It would also include, over the longer term, cuts in healthcare programmes, and would have what economists project to be a major impact on the budget deficit and the overall level of government debt. An important critique is coming from the bond market. Or, as The Hill newspaper reported, 'On May 21, a lackluster 20-year US Treasury bond auction delivered what can only be described as a resounding vote of no confidence in Washington's economic stewardship. The numbers were as stark as they were symbolic: a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.46 and a yield of 5.047 percent — the highest in five years.' Wrecking ball And then there is the damage created by Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a wrecking ball decimating or destroying agencies like the Voice of America and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (aka the weather bureau, among its other functions), and essentially eliminating most of the country's foreign aid programmes. The secretary of state can insist, as he did just the other day in an act of abject obeisance to the Trump presidency, that this latter move has hurt no one. But others point to studies showing that many thousands are on the cusp of death or have already died because of the abrupt cancellation of grants in health and nutrition, especially the Pepfar programme in Africa. Nonetheless, Musk and his chainsaw are, at least for now, out of the formal picture with the end of his special government employee status, but who knows what will happen next month — or if he will return in some other act of legerdemain. Tackling several of the country's premier cultural institutions, meanwhile, the Trump administration has attempted to remove the leadership of some Smithsonian Institution museums and the heads of the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center, all of them for being bastions of wokeness and DEI, whatever those might mean in Donald Trump's imagination. Simultaneously, the Trump administration, waving the bloody shirt of its putative fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses, is now effectively waging a punitive war on some of the country's premier universities — cancelling research grants, threatening their tax-exempt status that underpins the country's university financial systems, and it is ramping up criticism of academics who publicly hold views that the administration sees as the enemy at the gates. All of this can have much larger impacts. As The Economist put it: 'The attacks have been fast and furious. In a matter of months the Trump administration has cancelled thousands of research grants and withheld billions of dollars from scientists. Projects at Harvard and Columbia, among the world's best universities, have been abruptly cut off. A proposed budget measure would slash as much as 50% from America's main research-funding bodies. 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Worse, some are convinced Trump's madness is the real America. Too many seem to believe all Americans espouse Donald Trump's views (whatever they really are at any given time), rather than the fundamentals of the country's national character, history and traditions that I had thought I understood rather well and had conveyed to my foreign friends and acquaintances. Still, despite this litany of ugliness, I remain cautiously optimistic that even in the midst of this national 'fugue state', the country can right itself and 'the angels of our better nature', to echo Abraham Lincoln, will reassert themselves — but they had better up their game before it is too late.
The Star
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We don't need American solutions -Zuma
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