Guest Post by Alex Berenson
On Saturday night, The Wall Street Journal stunningly alleged that Elon Musk:
has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world… In 2018, for example, he took multiple tabs of acid at a party he hosted in Los Angeles.
These accusations are deeply serious. People caught with even small amounts of cocaine or LSD can face felony charges. And Musk is not merely the world’s wealthiest person, he’s its most powerful private citizen, thanks to his control of X and the Starlink satellite network.
I read the article with interest, wondering what sources the Journal had relied on to learn Musk “often” used controlled substances. Had someone gone on the record? Had its reporters found a sworn statement, like a deposition from someone who’d provided Musk with drugs? Perhaps they’d seen photos?
2,500 words later, I had my answer on the Journal’s sources: None.
That’s right. None. Not even an off-the-record quote.
The closest the article gets to sourcing is this: “people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it.”
The Wall Street Journal – the second-most important newspaper in the United States – had accused Musk of using cocaine and LSD without evidence.
Welcome to journalism in 2024.
To be sure, Musk is not a teetotaler.
He uses cannabis – famously, he smoked on Joe Rogan’s show in 2018. He’s also endorsed the use of ketamine as an antidepressant. I wish Musk wouldn’t do either. (Not that my opinion matters. He’s still mad and not talking to me.)
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(Not his finest moment. ALT: Joe Rogan can be very convincing!)
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But LSD and cocaine are very different – legally and culturally – than cannabis, or even ketamine. Cannabis is now essentially legal in the United States. Ketamine, despite its sometimes lethal risks, is openly advertised and prescribed as an antidepressant.
Cocaine and LSD are far less accepted.
Almost 25 percent of American adults said they’d used cannabis in 2022, according to a well-respected federal survey. But only 2 percent said they’d used cocaine, which carries a high risk of overdose and addiction, and fewer than 1 percent said they had used LSD, a powerful psychedilc. Even mainstream drug advocacy groups generally don’t suggest either be legalized.
Kirsten Grind, one of the reporters on the Journal article, understood the seriousness of her allegations:
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I have no idea whether Musk uses or has used cocaine, LSD, or any other drug. His behavior can be erratic – as it was in late November, when he told advertisers on X to “go fuck yourself.”
But he is also under enormous stress, as I saw firsthand a year ago.
Over the last two decades, Musk has had unfathomable success, shaking up one of the world’s most important industries with Tesla. Yet Tesla is arguably only his third most important company. SpaceX’s dominance in rockets and satellites means that even the American military depends on him, though it wishes it did not:
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Given the unfathomable stress Musk faces, the Journal is reckless beyond belief in claiming that his public behavior shows he is using psychedelics or any other drugs.
Further, the claim Musk used cocaine is completely impossible to evaluate. As weak as the article’s sourcing is, it does refer to specific instances in which Musk supposedly used LSD and magic mushrooms. For cocaine (and the club drug MDMA, or ecstasy, a methamphetamine derivative), it offers no dates or times at all.
I cannot imagine the Journal or The New York Times running this piece with this kind of sourcing even a couple of years ago, much less in 2010, the year I left the Times.
But standards at the top papers have plunged across the board. They have fallen even faster for coverage of people such as Musk, who have political views unacceptable to left-leaning newsrooms.
After Saturday’s piece, it’s hard to see how they could go much lower.
Then again, I’ve thought that before.
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It’s called ‘The First Amendment. There is no law that says I can’t attend a party and then spill the beans on who did what where. If you don’t believe it…fine. You wanna press charges? Fine. Waste your money. It’s next to worthless anyway.
Do you know the difference between pressing charges and suing someone civilly?
I’m sure they’re trying to get him to file a civil suit. Thats when they would trot out their witnesses. I’m a boomer. Almost everyone i know or knew, my age, has tried cocaine at some point in their lives. Fewer have dropped acid but still way more than 1%. Who f88king cares?
Yeah. I do. Pressing charges takes actual balls. You could lose and face consequences. Civilly, you’re doing the same thing you’re complaining about…talkin’ shit with ZERO accountability. No one ever went to prison for losing a civil case.
The First Amendment only applies to fedgov. That’s why clubs, homes, churches, websites, etc., have dictatorial terms of use. Private property is not .gov.
The media can say anything it wants.
Since when has the truth ever mattered to them?
Only really old people would see this as anything other than what it is, an attempt to make Musk look like the cool kid to give him street cred to anyone who isn’t a full time consumer of CNN.
He’s as fake and gay as everything else they’re selling.
Distraction from PEDOPHILE bill clinton exposure on Epsteins list.
This will never be over. Kafka wrote this shit and if you’ve read him you know.
SIGH… Still more theatre, and reporting the theatre with a supermarket tabloid.
Can it get any more ridiculous!?!?
I wonder if elon is the boy raised by bats…. hhmmmm
And you thot it was a joke… hah!!!
proof its real
All msm is captured media.
it’s amerika, circa 2024. proof??!! who needs that when so many have been dumbed down by ‘education’ they believe anything put in front of them as long as it is ‘official’?
‘drug use’ has not dulled Elon’s mind. can the same thing be said of those accusing him with no proof, or, what are those idiots smoking…er…taking…er…snorting…er…injecting to venture into accusatory land with no proof?
WSJ used to be a place to get news without the leftist slime all over it. Very ‘establishment’ vibe, reassuring even though you knew at least half of it was good old commie bullshit folded up onto a nice suit jacket pocket handkerchief, expensive charmeuse at that.
Looks like they’ve dipped their dick in the peanut butter.
Oh well, it’s all fading away. All the work my people did, the discipline they maintained, the structures we constructed and maintained, all fading away, replaced with FAKE AND GAY.
If you’ve ever tripped LSD you know the phrase ‘everything is nothing’. If you don’t know the phrase ‘everything is nothing’ you haven’t tripped LSD. And you know what I mean by ‘know’ if you’ve been there, otherwise it’s just a word to you.
The abyss is staring back at us, it is a very certain look, knowing and rock solid sure. It knows, we’ve traded everything for FAKE AND GAY.
But remember, as long as the flame burns, you are, and as long as you are, the flame burns, it cannot be otherwise and it will not be otherwise. You are the universe and the universe is you.
That was the perception about WSJ, but it was just a façade. I subbed for a long time.
There’s a bit of karma on The People’s Billionaire in this latest thing:
.
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Binary thinking is a cognitive bias, and enables divide and conquer.
WHEN did it become acceptable to accuse someone of doing drugs without any proof?
Probably around the same time it became acceptable to accuse people & prosecute them for 30 year old accusations of sexual assault without any proof, except their accusations!
Or when walking peacefully thru the Peoples house having been invited in, is then called an armed insurrection. And, you get held in prison for years without trial, without access to data that exonerates you and on top you are tortured.
You’ll sit in prison until you ‘confess’.
THIS, is acceptable for all whom oppose the dear leader and team
He used to be the darling of the left. They are not so enamored of him nowadays. The left eats their own and it looks like they are getting hungry.
Yeah, but the Babylon Bee boys like him, too:
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Musk has no friends but Musk. Allies, maybe, not friends.
“I cannot imagine the Journal or The New York Times running this piece with this kind of sourcing even a couple of years ago, much less in 2010, the year I left the Times.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1097097620/new-york-times-pulitzer-ukraine-walter-duranty
Slander and libel are still a legal thing, believe or not.
WSJ…just another three letter agency of the Borg…