One of President Donald Trump’s top aides has some thoughts about Elon Musk.
In a series of interviews with Vanity Fair published Tuesday, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles addressed Musk’s time as the de facto leader of DOGE, her thoughts on the Musk-led shutdown of USAID, and some of Musk’s personality quirks.
“Elon’s challenge is to catch up with Elon,” Wiles told the paper, adding that Musk is an “public ketamine” user who “sleeps in a sleeping bag” during the day in an office building adjacent to the White House. “He’s a quirky, quirky duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it doesn’t help, but he’s his own man.”
Asked about a meme that Musk reposted and then stopped sharing about public sector workers killing people under the dictatorships of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, Wiles said, “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.”
In June, Musk denied being a current ketamine user, writing to X that he “doesn’t take drugs.” He said he had been prescribed the drug “several years ago” but had not taken it since.
Asked for further comment on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Musk’s xAI told Business Insider that “legacy media is lying.”
In a separate interview with The New York Times on Monday, Wiles denied comments about Musk’s drug use, saying, “She wouldn’t have said that, and I didn’t know.” But the Times reported that Chris Whipple, the journalist who interviewed Mr. Wiles for Vanity Fair, played the tape for the newspaper, and Mr. Wiles could be heard making the comments on it.
One of the most notable features of Mr. Musk’s tenure in the White House was the sudden dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“I was shocked at first,” Wiles told Vanity Fair. “Because I think anyone who has looked at government and looked at USAID believes, as I do, that they are doing a very good job.”
Wiles said dismantling USAID was “not my style” and told Musk “you can’t lock people out of your office.”
“Elon’s attitude is we have to get it done fast. If you’re an incrementalist, you’re not going to get a rocket to the moon,” Wiles said. “So with that kind of attitude, you’re breaking ceramics. But no rational person can think that the USAID process is a good one. No one.”
Musk left the White House in the spring and fell out with Trump over the Big Beautiful Act, but the two appear to have mended their relationship in recent months.
Wiles wrote in X magazine on Tuesday morning that Vanity Story was a “dishonestly constructed hit piece” that “vital context was ignored” to “paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team.”
Asked about Wiles’ comments, the White House sent Business Insider a statement of support from Press Secretary Caroline Levitt.
“Chief of Staff Susie Wiles helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months of any president in American history,” Levitt said. “President Trump has never had a greater and more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and is completely united in her support.”
