For Liberal Pundits, New Elon Musk ‘Derangement Syndrome’ Emerges

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at the recent left-wing panic over Elon Musk’s relationship with president-elect Donald Trump, and we cover more media misses.

Elon Musk Derangement Syndrome

Trump Derangement Syndrome is morphing into an adjacent affliction, this time with symptoms centered on billionaire Elon Musk — and no left-leaning pundit is safe.

The Musk Derangement Syndrome is not entirely new, but does seem to be worsening as the Tesla CEO grows ever-closer with the president-elect. Except to many on the Left, Musk himself is the president-elect.

Democratic lawmakers and pundits are increasingly peddling a conspiracy that Musk is the “shadow” president. (The hypocrisy of accusing Trump of having a shadow president after four years of President Biden’s “leadership” is lost on them, apparently.)

The narrative picked up speed last week after Musk, the incoming co-chair of the newly-created “Department of Government Efficiency,” was a vocal leader of efforts to trim the fat from a 1,500-page spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.

“Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed! VOX POPULI. VOX DEI,” Musk posted on X Wednesday.

This led MSNBC anchors to panic about Musk’s power.

“Elon Musk, the guy who really runs things. He’s not just Trump’s co-president. I think that’s way too low a title,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said. “He’s the head dude in charge and House Republicans certainly know who they are taking their marching orders from.”

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary turned MSNBC anchor, offered a similar take. “Elon Musk is around Trump all the time. He was in that picture that you referenced, that was at the Army-Navy game, creepily kind of right over his shoulder. He seems to be living at Mar-a-Lago. I don’t know how Trump feels about that. Maybe he’s enjoying it currently. Will he still? And he’s also getting credit for having power over Congress, over Trump. How does that sit with Trump? We know from history, typically doesn’t sit well,” she said.

Morning Joe co-anchor Willie Geist claimed that Republicans are actually referring to Trump as the vice president.

Representative Mark Pocan (D., Wisc.) suggested Trump is just Musk’s “errand boy,” while Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) claimed it’s clear Musk, the “shadow president,” is in charge of the GOP.

The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg took the conspiracy a step further, joking that Trump should “stay away from the stairways” after Joy Behar suggested Musk and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance may be colluding against the former and future president.

Former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, meanwhile, was apparently incensed that Musk waded into the battle over the continuing resolution, writing on X: “So @elonmusk you also suck at politics lol f*** you fascist.”

“You elevate Tourette’s to poetry,” Musk wrote back.

Meanwhile, tech reporter Kara Swisher, who is looking to find a group of investors to purchase the Washington Post from Jeff Bezos — who has shown no interest in selling the paper — wanted to preemptively exclude Musk from this group that does not exist, hoping to buy a paper that is not for sale. Poor Elon.

“Hopefully not Elon, though he seems pretty busy these days being President (Not) Elect,” she said of her search.

Headline Fail of the Week

The New York Daily News offered this misleading framing of a brutal attack on the New York subway: “Woman dies after she catches fire in Brooklyn subway car; NYPD suspects homicide.”

The bad headline earned the paper a community note on X.

“The woman did not ‘catch fire.’ It was a deliberate and intentional act, caught on surveillance cameras. NYPD has arrested a suspect, Sebastian Zapeta, who is accused of intentionally setting the woman on fire, while she was sleeping,” the note read.

The fact that the liberal outlet would bend over backwards to avoid saying the woman was set on fire perhaps comes as little surprise now that Zapeta has been identified as a Guatemalan migrant. Authorities are working to determine Zapeta’s immigration status, though the Daily Mail reports he entered the U.S. and was detained by Border Patrol agents in 2018.

Media Misses

• New York governor Kathy Hochul one-upped the Daily News, securing her a win for worst reaction to the subway attack. Just hours after the woman was burned alive, Hochul posted on X about the decrease in crime on the subways since she deployed National Guard members earlier this year. “In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day,” Hochul’s post read. “Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up,” she wrote.
• Too little, too late: former CNN editor-at-large Chris Cilizza recently offered remorse for failing to look further into claims that Biden was facing mental decline before Cilizza left the network in 2022. “As a reporter, I have a confession to make,” Cillizza said on his YouTube channel Thursday. “I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.” He said he would brush off Republicans who reached out to him questioning why he hadn’t reported on Biden’s decline because he had not seen “evidence” of Biden’s failing mental acuity.
• We’ve lost track at this point of all the times the New York Times has missed the mark on its religion reporting: