President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles denied calling Elon Musk an “avowed” drug user during an interview with Vanity Fair, but the reporter she spoke to had a recording of the conversation.
The bombshell piece included nearly a dozen interviews with Wiles sharing her apparently unfiltered views on the president and his inner circle. Those include observations about Trump’s “alcoholic’s personality” and the revelation that Vice President JD Vance has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Wiles also addressed billionaire Musk’s scorched-earth reign as the head of the nebulous White House cost-cutting taskforce DOGE, describing him as a “complete solo actor” whose decision to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development left her “aghast.”
“The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him,” Wiles said. “He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it’s not helpful, but he is his own person.”
At one point in the interview, author Chris Whipple also asked Wiles what she thought about Musk sharing a post on X that suggested it wasn’t Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong who caused the deaths of millions of people, but their public-sector workers.
“I think that’s when he’s microdosing,” said Wiles, who insisted she didn’t have first-hand knowledge of Musk’s alleged drug use.
Reached for comment by The New York Times, Wiles tried to walk back the statements.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know.”
Whipple, however, played a tape for the Times in which Wiles could be heard saying it.
In a statement posted to X, Wiles went into damage control mode, calling the Vanity Fair story a “hit piece” and claiming that “significant context was disregarded.”
“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” she said. “None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also wrote on X to defend Wiles, saying, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie.”
“The entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her,” Leavitt said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the White House and Musk for comment.
The billionaire Tesla chief and Trump megadonor has acknowledged using small amounts of ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, to treat depression, but denied reports that he took so much ketamine during the 2024 campaign that it damaged his bladder.
Sources told The New York Times that Musk carried around a box with about 20 pills, including Adderall, and that he allegedly used ecstasy and magic mushrooms at private gatherings across the U.S. and during at least one overseas event.
“I am NOT taking drugs! The New York Times was lying their ass off,” Musk raged in a a post on X on May 31. “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.”
After the president wondered to reporters if Musk’s alleged drug use had contributed to their spectacular falling out, Musk posted the results of a drug test showing he had tested negative on June 11 for ecstasy and ketamine.
But according to the Times, Musk was alerted in advance when random drug testing was scheduled at one of his other companies, SpaceX. The White House also refused to answer questions about whether Musk was ever tested during his time as a special government employee.
That meant there “hasn’t been any sort of scrutiny of true monitoring or testing” of Musk, reporter Megan Twohey told MSNBC, now MS NOW, after the story came out.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2024 that SpaceX executives decided not to apply for the highest-level security clearance for Musk after lawyers warned that his alleged drug use and regular contact with foreign governments could jeopardize the company’s defense contracts.
Sources told the Journal that Musk had used LSD, cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy, and psychedelic mushrooms.
His lawyer told the Journal it had reported “false facts” but didn’t specify which parts were wrong.
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