“She’s just saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say.” (She is only saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say.)
“Let’s just say that their punishment for disobedience is a little worse than a ‘performance improvement plan’.” (Let’s just say that their punishment for disobedience is a little worse than a “performance improvement plan.”)
That is what Elon Musk wrote on his social network X, referring to the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum. It is not a sophisticated metaphor nor an innocent irony. It is a direct imputation of subordination to criminal organizations. In clear terms, it is an accusation of obedience to drug trafficking formulated without a single piece of public evidence.
When a foreign businessman, owner of the platform from which he accuses, points to a sitting head of state as an instrument of “cartel bosses,” we are not facing a trivial outburst. We are facing a defamation of extreme gravity. It is not an ideological discrepancy. It is not a harsh criticism of a public policy. It is the attribution of a specific conduct, criminally reprehensible and politically devastating, without evidence to support it.
Freedom of expression, so often invoked as an automatic shield, does not turn every word uttered from a position of power into a virtue. The right to express oneself is not equivalent to the right to impute crimes without foundation. The distinction is essential: criticizing governmental decisions is part of democratic debate; asserting that a president answers to orders from organized crime is the attribution of a specific fact. If that fact is unproven, the imputation is not opinion: it is defamation, and it may even entail civil liability if knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth is demonstrated.
The problem is aggravated by asymmetry. Musk is not an ordinary citizen writing anonymously. He is the owner of the digital space where he publishes. He controls the algorithm that amplifies his message. He possesses immediate global megaphone power. His words do not circulate on equal footing; they dominate the conversation. When he accuses, he does so from a structural position of power incomparable to that of any Latin American head of state within the digital ecosystem he himself governs.
Public ethics demand proportionality between power and responsibility. The greater the power, the greater the rigor must be. Musk acts in the opposite direction. He uses maximum communicational power with a null evidentiary standard. He provides no documents, presents no verifiable evidence, invokes no independent investigations, formulates no hypothesis grounded in demonstrable facts. He launches an accusation of criminal subordination and leaves it suspended in a vacuum, trusting that the magnitude of his loudspeaker will do the rest.
This is not the first time he has trivialized Latin American sovereignty. In 2020, when questioned about the role of Bolivian lithium in the political crisis that culminated in Evo Morales’ departure, he wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” (We will stage coups against whoever we want. Deal with it.) Beyond subsequent qualifications, the phrase remained as a stark declaration of power. It reveals a conception in which technological wealth appears to grant political superiority that disregards borders and relativizes the self-determination of states.
This precedent is not anecdotal. It illustrates a pattern: the use of capital and digital infrastructure as instruments of discursive intervention without proportional responsibility. When the one who controls the global loudspeaker decides that he can insinuate criminal ties of a sovereign government without proving anything, the issue ceases to be personal and becomes structural.
This is not about partisan sympathies or ideological affinities. It is about limits. Democracies survive because there are checks and balances: limits on the State, limits on the market, and limits on private power. If private billionaire power allows itself to accuse a head of state without proof and to shelter behind freedom of expression to evade any ethical consequence, the very notion of public responsibility erodes.
The question is not whether Musk can legally write whatever he wants under the umbrella of the First Amendment. The question is what happens when concentrated wealth and control of a global infrastructure combine to defame without evidence. At what point does freedom of expression transform into abuse of dominant position? At what moment does accusation without proof cease to be irreverence and become political pressure?
There is something profoundly aberrant about using a planetary platform to sow suspicions of criminal complicity without assuming the burden of proving them. It is not courage. It is not frankness. It is irresponsibility amplified by money. And when that irresponsibility comes from someone who concentrates economic, technological, and media power, the potential damage transcends the person targeted and reaches the very architecture of international public debate.
If we normalize that a billionaire can accuse a president of obeying cartels without exhibiting a single piece of evidence, we implicitly accept that economic power stands above democratic prudence. We accept that words no longer need truth, only volume. And when volume replaces truth, politics ceases to be deliberation and becomes a spectacle of force.
That is what is at stake. Not an isolated tweet.