Susie Wiles described the whiplash of working around someone who runs on impulse and expects everyone else to call it innovation
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Elon Musk has a new classification inside Washington’s zoo — genus: “odd duck.” In a striking Vanity Fair interview, President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles called the Tesla $TSLA CEO — and former government employee with DOGE — “an avowed ketamine [user],” adding that he is “a complete solo actor” and “an odd, odd duck” whose actions weren’t always “rational” and frequently left her aghast.
Wiles, however, is pushing back on her Vanity Fair comments. On X $TWTR, Musk’s social media platform, she wrote that the article is a “disingenuously framed hit piece” and saying that “significant context was disregarded,” suggesting that this was done intentionally to paint a “negative narrative” of the Trump administration — one that’s “overwhelmingly chaotic.”
Wiles’ interview doesn’t deny Musk’s brilliance — she even frames his oddness as a feature of genius — but it puts even more daylight between the White House and one of its most mercurial allies. Her putting “avowed ketamine [user]” on the record comes after months of reporting and denials from Musk. A recent New York Times investigation alleged that Musk’s ketamine use went far beyond occasional, alongside claims about other substances; Musk has pushed back, saying he tried ketamine “a few years ago” but hasn’t used it recently. Wiles attempted to walk back her Musk-related comments to the New York Times — calling this claim “ridiculous” — and saying she “wouldn’t have said that, and I wouldn’t know” about Musk’s alleged drug use. But Vanity Fair played the tape for the New York Times — showing Wiles saying exactly what they reported, word for word.
For a while, Washington treated Musk like a special exhibit: don’t feed, don’t touch — pretend everything is normal. He helped bankroll Trump’s return to the White House, then got invited into the building to do what he does best — show up loud, move fast, and dare institutions to keep up. DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, was the branding: a cost-cutting crusade with a meme name and an actual federal footprint. Wiles’ version of the experience reads like staff containment — the “complete solo actor” line — then describes the whiplash of working around someone who runs on impulse and expects everyone else to call it innovation.
She pointed to USAID as the cleanest example of that. Musk’s instinct, she said, was scorched earth — shut it down, fire everyone, rebuild later — and she says she was “initially aghast.” It wasn’t, she said, how she’d do things. While governance has rules, chokepoints, and consequences, Musk has deadlines and adrenaline.
DOGE, as a concept, was built for Musk’s brand. “Efficiency,” disruption, the promise of doing more with less, the seductive idea that government could be run like a startup if only the right genius showed up with enough confidence and a sufficiently large metaphorical flamethrower. But Musk’s time inside the White House ended faster than advertised — as Tesla’s stock fell with every day its CEO was in Washington, not at the company’s headquarters in Texas; DOGE wound down well before its original end date; reports have shown that the “efficiency” department wasn’t all that efficient after all; and Musk later said he wouldn’t do it again — a rare admission from someone who usually treats fallout as collateral. The job, he suggested, was bruising, politically radioactive, and incompatible with the way he actually operates.
The relationship with Trump hasn’t entirely survived the political unwind. When Musk publicly torched Trump’s signature tax-and-spending package as fiscally reckless, the president responded in kind, calling Musk “off the rails … a TRAIN WRECK,” dismissing his political ambitions as “ridiculous,” and floating threats that veered from contract retaliation to suggestions Musk should “go back” where he came from. The bill passed anyway. And Musk, once a near-constant presence in the Oval Office, has faded from the daily rhythms of the administration as the president stops treating Musk like a prized animal.
So now, the president’s top aide is reaching for the bluntest available taxonomy, then circling it twice. “Odd, odd duck.” “Avowed” drug user. “Solo actor.” Not always “rational.” For anyone trying to understand how Musk operated in and around DOGE, Wiles is basically handing over the employee performance review with the highlights already underlined.
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