We rated 60 of Elon Musk’s public statements, from 2011 to 2026, as intelligent, unclear or unhinged. The unhinged ones pile up from one point: March 2020, the first weeks of the Covid pandemic. Before 2020 we rated 2 of his 30 statements unhinged; from 2020 onward, 20 of 30.
Covid is the obvious suspect, and the science says it can dent reasoning. The dates tell a more specific story: he was calling the pandemic panic “dumb” eight months before he said he “most likely” had Covid, and the biggest blow-ups came after he bought Twitter and turned twice in his politics. Every rating is in the table at the end.
What the statement ratings found
The COVID theory has a sound reason for being asked. In a 2024 study reported by STAT, Imperial College London researchers gave eight cognitive tasks to more than 112,000 people in England. Compared with participants who had not been infected, people whose COVID symptoms resolved in four to 12 weeks scored lower by the equivalent of roughly three IQ points. The gap was six points for symptoms lasting longer than 12 weeks and nine for those who had been hospitalized.
Lead author Adam Hampshire, professor of restorative neurosciences at Imperial College London, said:
“Brain fog can correlate with objectively measurable deficits in a person’s actual memory and executive task performance.”, Adam Hampshire
Our statement ratings initially look consistent with a sudden change. Of 30 statements before 2020, we rated 21 intelligent, two unhinged and seven unclear. Of 30 from 2020 onward, we rated six intelligent, 20 unhinged and four unclear. Removing every entry marked “memory”, one without a source check, leaves this comparison:
| Period | Ratings for source-checked statements |
|---|---|
| Before 2020 | 19 intelligent · 2 unhinged · 5 unclear (26 total) |
| From 2020 onward | 4 intelligent · 14 unhinged · 3 unclear (21 total) |
Fourteen of the 21 source-checked later statements were rated unhinged, two-thirds of that selected set.
On March 19, 2020, Musk predicted “Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April.” That was a testable forecast; it failed. Our ratings also apply the label to his October 2022 proposal that Crimea become formally Russian and Ukraine remain neutral; his November 2023 reply, “You have said the actual truth,” to a post about Jewish communities; and his April 2024 prediction that AI would be smarter than any one human “probably around the end of next year.”
They apply it again to “Civil war is inevitable” during Britain’s August 2024 riots; to his February 28, 2025, description of Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” which PolitiFact rated False; and to “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you,” in a September 13, 2025, video address to a London rally.
The infection timeline
The first statement in that later run came on March 6, 2020. When Musk called coronavirus panic “dumb,” Johns Hopkins University had counted at least 245 U.S. infections and 14 deaths. His near-zero-cases prediction followed later that month. Both preceded the infection he reported.
In November 2020, Musk said he “most likely” had a moderate case. Gulf News reported that he had received two positive and two negative rapid-test results; he disclosed no laboratory PCR result.
Nor did overconfident predictions begin with COVID. Our pre-2020 unhinged ratings include Musk calling the Securities and Exchange Commission the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission” days after settling its fraud case against him, and his 2019 promise of more than a million robotaxis “next year.” Other positions persisted across the supposed break: our review found continuity in his warnings about AI risk and population decline, his distrust of the media, and his support for a form of universal income.
A bigger platform and two political reversals
After Musk bought Twitter in 2022, the consequences of his posts reached the business he owned. Following his November 2023 endorsement of the post about Jewish communities, advertisers including Disney and Apple suspended campaigns. At the November 29 DealBook Summit, he accused advertisers trying to leave of blackmail and told them, “Go f— yourself.”
At that same event, Musk called his posts concerning Jewish communities among the most foolish things he had done on X, apologized, and denied being antisemitic. The apology and the attack on advertisers came from the same stage.
His reach later extended into government. WIRED identified six young DOGE engineers aged 19 to 24, including one who appeared to have recently finished high school; agency staff told WIRED one of them joined calls where employees had to explain their code and justify their jobs. NBC News reported DOGE’s access to sensitive federal systems. University of Michigan public-policy professor Don Moynihan, who was not involved in DOGE, told WIRED that people outside ordinary public-office accountability were gaining access to some of government’s most sensitive data.
Musk’s project promised enormous cuts. In August 2026, the Government Accountability Office checked $110 billion of savings DOGE claimed from contracts, grants and leases and found problems with their transparency and reliability. DOGE’s wider tally was $215 billion. Of 13,476 contracts it claimed to have terminated, the GAO found no termination action on 2,503. For leases, DOGE claimed $113 million saved; the reviewed leases added up to $53.5 million, a $59.5 million gap between the two figures. The GAO said some leases were already being terminated before DOGE existed.
There is a financial contrast here, too. A Washington Post analysis reported by Fortune found that Musk’s companies had collected at least $38 billion through government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits. On June 12, 2026, Forbes estimated that SpaceX’s public-market valuation had made him the first person to reach an estimated $1 trillion in wealth. He fell back below $1 trillion within two weeks. Public money helped build businesses whose owner was then entrusted with finding government waste.
The political chronology is clearer than any medical theory. In 2016, Musk said Trump lacked the character to represent the United States well, while praising Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental policies. In February 2022, he complained that President Joe Biden was ignoring Tesla; the White House praised Tesla’s electric-vehicle work but disputed parts of Musk’s account. Musk declared that May he would vote Republican.
In July 2022, Musk said Trump should “sail into the sunset”. He endorsed him in July 2024. Musk’s explanation that “the left moved” speaks to his view of Democrats; it does not explain away his own stated reversals on Trump and climate urgency.
Our reading is that the reckless streak was already there; ownership gave it a larger stage, and politics changed what he used that stage to say. The March 2020 posts make the reported infection a poor explanation for where the change began. The Twitter purchase and the two dated political turns explain much more of what followed.
The full ratings
Every statement we rated, in date order. Rows marked “None (from memory)” had no source attached when we rated them; they are excluded from the source-backed counts above.
| Date | Statement | Topic | Our rating | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | SpaceX could put people on Mars in 10–20 years | Space | Intelligent | None (from memory) |
| Mar 2011 | Tesla sued BBC Top Gear for libel, saying its Roadster test was staged | Media / conduct | Intelligent | Bloomberg |
| 2012 | Asked Neil Armstrong to give private spaceflight a chance, after Armstrong and Cernan criticised commercial spaceflight | Space | Intelligent | NBC News |
| Oct 2012 | Said Romney was wrong to call Tesla a "loser" in a presidential debate | US politics | Intelligent | Green Car Reports |
| Nov 2012 | Plan for a self-sustaining colony of 80,000 people on Mars | Space | Unclear | Silicon Republic |
| Feb 2013 | Accused a New York Times reviewer of making up data in a bad Model S test drive | Media | Intelligent | Maclean's |
| Mar 2013 | "I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact" | Space | Intelligent | HuffPost |
| Jun 2013 | 90-second battery swap for the Model S; swap stations to open soon | EVs | Unclear | Green Car Reports |
| Aug 2013 | Hyperloop: an open design for a tube train from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 30 minutes | Transport | Intelligent | National Geographic |
| Oct 2013 | Called hydrogen fuel cell cars a dead end ("fool cells") | EVs / energy | Intelligent | The Truth About Cars |
| Jun 2014 | "All our patents belong to you" (Tesla opens its patents) | EVs | Intelligent | IndustryWeek |
| Aug 2014 | AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes" | AI risk | Intelligent | CNBC |
| Oct 2014 | With AI "we are summoning the demon" | AI risk | Intelligent | None (from memory) |
| Dec 2015 | Only a carbon tax will speed the exit from fossil fuels; make it revenue-neutral and phased in | Climate / tax | Intelligent | Fortune |
| Jun 2016 | Chance we live in base reality is "one in billions" | Simulation | Unclear | None (from memory) |
| Oct 2016 | A Tesla will drive itself from LA to New York by end of 2017 | Self-driving | Unclear | CleanTechnica |
| Oct 2016 | To the media: "If you dissuade people from using an autonomous vehicle, you are killing people" | Self-driving | Intelligent | CNBC |
| Nov 2016 | Trump is probably "not the right guy"; Clinton's economic and environmental policies are right | US politics | Intelligent | Inverse |
| Nov 2016 – Feb 2017 | Automation will make universal basic income "necessary" | Economy | Intelligent | Business Insider |
| Jan 2017 | Trump's travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries is "not the best way" to address US challenges | Immigration | Intelligent | CNBC |
| Jan 2017 | Stayed on Trump's councils: "Simply attacking him will achieve nothing" | US politics | Intelligent | Electrek |
| Jun 2017 | Left Trump's councils: "Climate change is real" | Climate | Intelligent | CNBC |
| Jul 2017 | "The world's population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care" | Demographics | Unclear | Fortune |
| May 2018 | Big media publish "only enough to sugarcoat the lie"; said Trump was elected because nobody believes reporters | Media | Unclear | CNBC |
| May 2018 | Proposed a public site to rate the credibility of each journalist, maybe called "Pravda" | Media | Intelligent | CNN |
| Jul 2018 | Called the cave rescue diver "pedo guy" | Conduct | Unclear | None (from memory) |
| Aug 2018 | "Funding secured" (Tesla private at $420) | Business | Intelligent | Carscoops |
| Oct 2018 | "The Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work" | Business conduct | Unhinged | Mediaite |
| Apr 2019 | "Next year for sure, we'll have over a million robotaxis on the road" | Self-driving | Unhinged | CNBC |
| Aug 2019 | "I support Yang" (Democratic candidate); UBI is "obviously needed" | US politics | Intelligent | CNBC |
| 6 Mar 2020 | "The coronavirus panic is dumb" | COVID | Unhinged | CNBC |
| 19 Mar 2020 | "Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April" | COVID | Unhinged | Mediaite |
| 19 Mar 2020 | "0% chance of anything close" to Imperial College's 2.2 million US death estimate | COVID | Unhinged | Business Insider |
| 29 Apr 2020 | "FREE AMERICA NOW" and "Give people their freedom back!" | COVID | Unhinged | Mediaite |
| Nov 2020 | "Coronavirus is a type of cold" (while he probably had it) | COVID | Unhinged | Gulf News |
| May 2021 | Tesla stopped taking Bitcoin because of fossil fuel use in mining | Crypto | Intelligent | None (from memory) |
| Feb 2022 | Activated Starlink in Ukraine and sent terminals | Ukraine | Intelligent | Autoblog |
| Mar 2022 | Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy | Free speech | Intelligent | None (from memory) |
| May 2022 | Voted Democrat before, will now vote Republican | Party politics | Unclear | Mediaite |
| 3 Oct 2022 | Peace plan: Crimea formally part of Russia, Ukraine stays neutral | Ukraine | Unhinged | Al Jazeera |
| Oct 2022 | "If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace" | Ukraine | Unclear | Autoblog |
| Dec 2022 | "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci" | COVID / culture | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| Mar 2023 | Signed the open letter for a 6-month pause on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 | AI risk | Intelligent | Semafor |
| Nov 2023 | "The actual truth" (reply to a post about Jewish communities) | Antisemitism row | Unhinged | Jerusalem Post |
| Nov 2023 | Told advertisers who left X to "go f — yourself" | Business | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| Apr 2024 | AI smarter than any one human "probably around the end of next year" | AI | Unhinged | Fortune |
| Jul 2024 | "I fully endorse President Trump" | US politics | Unhinged | Mediaite |
| Jul 2024 | His estranged child was "killed by the woke mind virus" | Gender / culture | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| 4 Aug 2024 | "Civil war is inevitable" (UK riots) | UK | Unhinged | Fortune |
| Dec 2024 | "Only the AfD can save Germany" | Europe | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| Feb 2025 | Held a chainsaw at CPAC as a symbol of cuts to bureaucracy | Government | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| 2025 | DOGE could cut $1–2 trillion from federal spending | Government | Unhinged | None (from memory) |
| 28 Feb 2025 | "Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time" | Welfare | Unhinged | PolitiFact |
| Jun 2025 | Trump's spending bill is a "disgusting abomination" | Fiscal policy | Intelligent | Arise |
| Jun 2025 | Linked Trump to the Epstein files (post later deleted) | US politics | Intelligent | NTN24 |
| Jun 2025 | Said his posts about Trump "went too far" | US politics | Unclear | Arise |
| Jul 2025 | Announced the "America Party" | US politics | Unclear | None (from memory) |
| 13 Sep 2025 | "Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you" (London rally) | UK | Unhinged | RTHK / AFP |
| 13 Sep 2025 | Called for dissolution of the UK parliament and a change of government | UK | Unhinged | RTHK / AFP |
| Jan 2026 | "2026 is going to be amazing!" (after dinner with Trump) | US politics | Unhinged | Arise |
Further Reading
- NEJM study measures Covid brain fog, impact on IQ, STAT reports the study’s group-level cognitive findings and limitations.
- Tesla’s Elon Musk says the coronavirus panic is dumb, CNBC dates Musk’s early pandemic post.
- Elon Musk says he ‘most likely’ has moderate case of COVID-19, Gulf News reports his mixed test results.
- Elon Musk says advertisers trying to ‘blackmail’ him: ‘Go f— yourself’, CNBC reports Musk’s DealBook remarks and apology.
- The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover, WIRED identifies DOGE personnel and reports their agency roles.
- Elon Musk and DOGE are hacking the government, NBC News reports DOGE’s federal-system access.
- GAO finds Elon Musk’s DOGE inflated claims on federal government savings, CNBC details the GAO’s review of DOGE’s figures.
- Elon Musk has been entrusted with federal cost-cutting. Meanwhile, his businesses have collected a reported $38 billion in government funds, including millions loaned to Tesla when it was struggling, Fortune reports the Washington Post analysis of support for Musk’s companies.
- Elon Musk accuses Biden of ignoring Tesla, says he would ‘do the right thing’ at White House, CNBC records Musk’s account and the White House response.
- Elon Musk says it’s time for Trump to ‘sail into the sunset’, CNBC reports his position on Trump in July 2022.
- Elon Musk Says This “Isn’t the Finest Moment in Our Democracy”, Inverse reports Musk’s 2016 criticism of Trump.