Over the weekend, Elon Musk hit back at the New York Times about the newspaper’s exposé claiming that the tech mogul and prominent Trump ally was “using drugs far more intensely than previously known” while he campaigned for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“I am NOT taking drugs! The New York Times was lying their ass off,” Musk wrote in a May 31 post on X, the social media platform he owns. He continued, “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.”
The New York Times PR team responded to Musk in a reply on X: “Elon Musk is just lashing out because he doesn’t like our article. We provided Musk with multiple opportunities to reply or rebut this reporting before publication and he declined, opting instead to try to distract with a social post and no evidence.”
According to the Times, the two reporters on the story — Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey — produced a “thoroughly sourced report provides an important and fair look into Musk’s drug use and family conflicts. They interviewed a dozen people who have known or worked with him, and saw private text messages, legal documents and photographic evidence.”
The Times article by Grind and Twohey, published May 30, said that “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.”
Musk last week announced that he is stepping away from the Trump administration, for which he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), although he said he will continue to informally advise the president.
At a White House press conference last Friday to mark his stepping away from DOGE, Musk declined to answer a question from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy about the Times piece on his alleged drug use. “The New York Times — is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate? Is that the same organization? I think it is,” Musk said.
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Musk then referred to Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the board of the Pulitzer Prizes, which Trump filed after the organization refused his request to rescind awards to the Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Musk said, “I think the judge just ruled against New York Times for their lies about the Russiagate hoax, and they may have to give back their Pulitzer Prize.” The ruling Musk cited was not against the New York Times, which is not a party to Trump’s suit against the Pulitzer board. A state judge in Florida last year rejected the Pulitzer board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and last week a state court rejected the board’s bid to pause the case (which the Pulitzer board had argued could prompt a constitutional crisis because Trump is the president) in ruling that Trump’s lawsuit could proceed.
From Variety US