Dressed in his all-black ‘Dark Gothic MAGA’ hat, black coat, T-shirt and sunglasses, Elon Musk was going for the rock star look as he came on stage on Thursday night in Maryland.
He bounded around punching the air at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with all the suppressed energy of a boxer limbering up for the big fight, yet he was clearly waiting to add the final touch.
On cue, Argentina’s eccentric President Javier Milei walked on stage clutching a huge chainsaw and handed it to the man who has promised to do what Milei is already doing in his own clapped-out country – slicing government spending to bits.
The giant power tool was engraved with ‘Viva la libertad, carajo’, Spanish for ‘Long live liberty, damn it’. It’s what Milei famously wielded during his successful 2023 run for Argentina’s presidency.
Musk roared as he waved it over his head, telling the delighted crowd, ‘This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! Waaaagghh!’
The technology billionaire is hardly someone to pass up the chance to make a grand gesture.
He once brought a flamethrower with him to an interview with podcast king Joe Rogan and they proceeded to smoke cannabis together.
But that was in 2018 and Musk was just the world’s richest man.
Now he’s the head of Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, and widely regarded as the most powerful person in the new administration.
Might this have been the moment to tone down the antics and act with a little decorum?
Instead, Musk has turned up the dial on his manic and narcissistic behaviour, a fact that appears to be confirmed by the singer Grimes, his former girlfriend and the mother of three of his children.
On the same day that Musk was gallivanting with the chainsaw, the Canadian pop star – whose real name is Claire Boucher – went on Musk’s social media platform, X, begging him to respond to texts, emails and phone calls about a ‘medical crisis’ facing one of the children.
‘Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis,’ wrote Grimes in a post that was later deleted. ‘I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention.’
She went on: ‘If you don’t want to talk to me can you please designate or hire someone who can so that we can move forward on solving this [?] This is urgent, Elon.’
Grimes did not say which of their children was involved: X Æ A-Xii (pronounced ‘X Ash A Twelve’), Exa Dark Sideræl, or Techno Mechanicus.
In another post, Grimes said: ‘I’m not giving any details but he won’t respond to texts, calls or emails and has skipped every meeting and our child will suffer lifelong impairment if he doesn’t respond asap, so I need him to f****** respond and if I have to apply public pressure then I guess that’s where we are at.’
Grimes criticised Musk’s parenting skills earlier this month when he took X Æ, now four, with him to the Oval Office for a press conference with President Trump about the work of DOGE.
‘He should not be in public like this,’ the child’s mother said on social media.
She was referring to the little boy, but many might agree she could have been talking about his 53-year-old father, whose behaviour – since he unofficially joined the government in January – has become even more erratic than it was previously.
Some viewers of the rambling interview he gave at CPAC – covering everything from his controversial government cuts to the war in Ukraine – noted that he sometimes seemed incoherent and even struggled to construct an intelligible sentence, sparking concern for his health.
‘I am become meme,’ he said at one point, adding: ‘My mind is a storm.’ He also suggested that Fort Knox’s gold depository wasn’t real, saying: ‘We just wanna see it and make sure somebody didn’t spray paint lead or something.’
On X, some speculated that he had taken drugs, most likely the party drug ketamine they suggested, before coming on stage, which might have explained not only his wild antics but also why he was wearing dark glasses – perhaps to hide rapid eye movement or dilated pupils.
Musk has admitted regularly using ketamine, a horse tranquiliser and powerful anaesthetic that’s become popular among recreational drug users for its hallucinogenic side-effects and the trance-like state it produces.
Musk has said he gets it on prescription from ‘an actual, real doctor’, even though in the US, it is a controlled substance and is only approved by the federal government as an anaesthetic.
In an interview last year, he said he uses ‘a small amount once every other week’ to treat depression. ‘There are times when I have sort of a… negative reaction in my brain, like depression I guess, or depression that’s not linked to any negative news, and ketamine is helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind,’ he said.
Asked if he abused the drug, he replied: ‘I don’t think so. If you use too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done, and I have a lot of work.’
However, Friends star Matthew Perry died from the ‘acute effects of ketamine’ and doctors warn it can be highly addictive.
Experts say the drug can lead to unpredictable behaviour and that, at higher doses, disassociation, a condition in which the user feels detached from their body and surroundings.
Ketamine researcher Amit Anand said users ‘can feel grandiose and like you have special powers or special talents. People do impulsive things, they could do inadvisable things at work’.
It’s hardly the first time Musk’s bizarre behaviour has raised concerns about his mental state.
He is an uber-workaholic who happily sleeps in his office. A 2023 biography revealed he would sometimes get so over-stressed he would stay awake all night and end up vomiting with anxiety.
His already heavy workload as the boss of various companies including car maker Tesla, rocket manufacturer SpaceX and his social media platform has been increased by his government work.
And there is plenty of that. He has pledged to cut $2trillion in annual federal government spending, yet so far he has cut only $55billion – and even that figure is contested.
In 2018, the New York Times reported that members of the Tesla board had become worried about Musk’s use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien, which can cause hallucinations.
Just over a year ago, the Wall Street Journal claimed Musk had also been taking the hallucinogenic drug LSD (aka acid), cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms – supposedly consumed at parties around the world that are so secretive, guests must sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from discussing what goes on and give up their phones as they enter.
Musk responded to the shocking claims on X, saying: ‘Whatever, I’m doing, I should obviously keep doing it! If drugs actually helped improve my net productivity over time, I would definitely take them!’
After Musk delivered a wild and extended diatribe about British politics, Musk biographer Seth Abramson said last month that he believed Musk could be ‘deeply unwell’ and ‘may be going mad’, with potentially serious consequences for the world.
Abramson said he’d been tracking Musk’s online behaviour for the past two years and ‘given that he’s admitted to all of mental illness, heavy drug use and crippling stress, it is now reasonable to fear he is deeply unwell’.
Such speculation is only likely to grow after his latest performance with the chainsaw.