Elon Musk Got a Black Belt With Three Degrees On It, Then Tied One On Barack Obama, Who Tied One On Donald Trump

The photograph was published by the academy itself. It is not a leak, it was not obtained, and nobody involved has asked for it back. It shows a man in a white gi standing at the front of a mat room while a second man ties a black belt around his waist, and behind them, at a respectful distance, eight or nine members of that academy applauding.

The man in the gi is Elon Musk. The belt is a black belt. The Document Desk has spent four weeks on the photograph and has not been able to make any part of it work.

Seventy-nine days later, in the same room, under the same banner, Mr Musk tied a black belt around the waist of Barack Obama.

Ninety days after that, Mr Obama tied one around the waist of Donald Trump.

Three black belts, in one room, in one hundred and sixty-nine days, each one conferred by the man who had received the last one.

We want to be precise about what this story is and is not. It is not an allegation that the ceremonies did not happen: they plainly happened, in front of witnesses, several of whom have spoken to us. It is not a claim that the belts are fake objects. They are black belts, four centimetres, standard weave, and somebody paid for them.

What we are reporting is narrower and, this desk would argue, worse. Every checkable statement these photographs make about time is false. Not disputed. Not contested by any expert we found. False in the arithmetic sense, against a schedule of minimum requirements published by the sport's own federation, and against the academy's own founding paperwork.

I. The Belt, Read Closely

A black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu carries a rank bar at one end, and the rank bar carries degrees, awarded at fixed intervals after the black belt itself. They are not decorative. They are the sport's way of stating, publicly and at a glance, how long a person has held the rank.

The belt in the first photograph has three. So does the one in the second. So does the one in the third.

Under the graduation system published by the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, a first degree may be awarded no sooner than three years after a black belt is conferred, a second no sooner than three years after that, and a third no sooner than three after that. Nine years, at an absolute floor, and that floor assumes uninterrupted training and a promoting instructor entitled to award them.

All three belts were tied in their photographs. None of them was being worn into the room. The academy's own captions, which it has since removed but which this newspaper archived, described each moment as a promotion.

So the belts state that these men have held the rank for nine years, and the captions state that they received them that morning, and both of those statements were published by the same organisation within the same sentence.

II. The Arithmetic

We asked the academy, in writing, on four occasions, for the date on which Mr Musk began training. We have not received it. We therefore did the only thing available to us, which was to work backwards from the belt.

Three degrees at a black belt requires nine years at black belt. A black belt requires, at the federation's published minimums and assuming a start as an adult, a further ten. Each belt in these photographs asserts, at the absolute arithmetic floor, nineteen years of continuous training under a qualified instructor.

The academy in the photographs was incorporated in 2019. The unit it occupies was, until March of that year, a carpet showroom, a fact established from the county's own commercial-occupancy record and from a photograph of the same wall taken by a real-estate agent in 2018.

Nineteen years of training, three times over, conferred inside a building that has been a jiu-jitsu academy for six.

This does not by itself prove anything about where the earlier years were spent, and we want to be fair about that: a student may train for a decade somewhere else and walk in the door already ranked. That is ordinary and it happens constantly. It is also, in this instance, the one explanation the academy could have given us in a single sentence, at any point in four weeks, and did not.

III. One Hundred and Sixty-Nine Days

The three ceremonies took place on 8 April, 26 June and 24 September. The interval from the first to the last is one hundred and sixty-nine days.

Set out plainly, the chain is this. A man whose rank the federation's register does not list promoted Mr Musk. Mr Musk, seventy-nine days into holding a black belt, promoted Mr Obama. Mr Obama, ninety days into holding a black belt, promoted Mr Trump. Each of the three belts carried three degrees on the day it was tied.

At no point in that chain did anybody hold the rank they were conferring for longer than the interval between two ceremonies.

One member who was present at all three, and who would not be named, put it to us this way: “Six months. Three black belts. Two presidents and the richest man on earth. It must have cost a fortune.”

This desk has priced the physical objects. A competition black belt with a rank bar wholesales to academies in this region at $31.50. Three of them is $94.50, before tax and before the cost of the embroidery, which the academy does in-house.

We are therefore able to state with confidence that the belts did not cost a fortune. We are not in a position to say what did, and we are not going to speculate about it in print.

IV. The Rooms

There are, by our count, nine people in the frame of the first photograph besides the two principals. Eight of them are applauding. We have identified six and spoken to four.

All four confirmed the ceremony, all four described it as a normal promotion night, and all four declined to be quoted saying anything else. Three of them independently used the phrase “above my pay grade,” which this desk notes without drawing a conclusion from it.

The ninth is a man at the right edge of the frame, arms at his sides, who is not applauding, and who is the only person in the photograph looking at the belt rather than at the man wearing it.

He is a purple belt of eleven years. He agreed to speak on the record and then, over fifty-one minutes, spoke on the record more comprehensively than anyone this newspaper has interviewed this year. We are printing one sentence of it.

“I have been going to that room four nights a week since 2015,” he said, “and I have never once seen any of those three men on the mat, and I want you to write down that I said it and put my name next to it, and I have thought about it for a month, and I still want that.”

His name is in our sources. He asked for it to be.

The third photograph is a different matter, and it is where this story stopped being about one man's belt.

Standing behind and to the left of the principals, applauding, in the academy's own branded rash guard rather than a gi, is Richard B. Cheney, the forty-sixth Vice President of the United States. Standing beside him, in the same garment, is George W. Bush, the forty-third President. Neither is named in the academy's caption. Neither appears in the federation's register. Neither is wearing a belt of any colour, because neither is wearing anything a belt could be tied around.

This newspaper reported Mr Cheney's promotion to blue belt on 24 August. That story concerned a Winchester academy, a promotion on 14 August, and a promoting instructor who subsequently stopped returning our calls. The Document Desk has compared the two photographs at full resolution: the same banner, the same framed sign, the same ventilation grille, the same seam in the mat. It is the same room.

Forty-one days separate Mr Cheney's blue belt from the ceremony he is applauding in the third photograph. We asked the academy whether he has been promoted since. We asked six times. We have had no answer, and there is no belt in the picture to read.

V. The Wall

Two pieces of signage are legible behind all three ceremonies.

The banner directly over the principals reads DISCIPLINE LEADS TO FREEDOM. To the right, framed, in a serif face, is a second: BETTER PEOPLE THROUGH JIU-JITSU.

The Document Desk records the presence of both slogans in all three frames, at the moments described, and declines to characterise the effect.

VI. The Garment

The man tying the belt in the first photograph is wearing a fitted athletic top which bears, on the chest, a gold medallion enclosing a portrait of his own face, and, on the right sleeve, a second and smaller medallion enclosing the same portrait. Beneath the chest medallion is a two-word imperative which this newspaper is able to read in full.

He is at the right-hand edge of the second photograph with his arms folded. In the third he is further back, in the same garment, applauding.

Six other people in the third photograph are wearing that garment, including both former officeholders. The Document Desk counts eleven reproductions of one man's face in a single frame, worn by other people, at a ceremony he is not conducting.

We are not going to tell you what to make of that. We have described what is in the photographs. It is our position that this is a set of facts that does not require this newspaper's assistance.

We asked the academy eleven times to confirm his identity and his rank. It has confirmed neither. The federation's public register of qualified black belts, searched on 3 October, returns no entry matching any name the academy's website has used for him.

VII. The Third Ceremony

The 24 September ceremony was recorded by three members on their telephones. This newspaper has obtained two of those recordings, from members who supplied them independently and neither of whom has asked for payment or anonymity.

They show Mr Obama tying a black belt around the waist of Mr Trump. They show him finishing the knot, straightening it, and then placing his left hand on Mr Trump's shoulder and kissing him once on the right cheek.

He then leans in and says something into Mr Trump's ear, at a volume neither recording captures.

Both recordings are frontal and both are steady. This newspaper commissioned a forensic lip-reader of nineteen years' standing, who examined them separately and without being told what she was looking for. Her finding, which she has confirmed in writing and which we print with her hedge intact, is that the words appear to be I love you, and that she would put it no higher than appear.

Neither man's office disputes that the ceremony happened. Neither will address the recordings. The Trump office told this newspaper, in full: “That's a nice moment between two guys.” The Obama office did not respond to four requests.

This is not the first time this newspaper has reported on the relationship. Our Investigations desk established in August that the two men telephone one another every night, and that neither has ever denied it. Two members of the academy told us, unprompted and separately, that Mr Obama telephoned Mr Trump on the evening of 24 September. One of them was in the room. He says the call ended the way this newspaper has previously reported all of them end: goodnight, and I love you.

The Document Desk makes no finding about what any of that means. It records that a black belt was conferred, that a kiss was given, that a sentence was spoken which cannot be heard, and that a telephone call was made some hours later, and it observes that the only element of that evening anybody has been willing to put in writing is the one this desk cannot verify.

VIII. The Statement

On 6 October the academy sent a statement of one hundred and four words. We are printing the operative sentence exactly as received:

Every promotion at this academy is earned on the mat and reflects the individual journey of the practitioner, and we do not discuss the timelines of our students out of respect for their privacy.

The Document Desk's constituent analysis of that sentence, filed on 7 October and running to four pages, notes that it does not say any of the three men trained here, does not say when any of them began, does not say who awarded the degrees, and does not say that the degrees were awarded at all. It asserts a principle and declines every fact. It is, in this desk's assessment, an extremely carefully written sentence, and we would like to know who wrote it.

IX. What He Said

Mr Musk posted the first photograph himself at 11:49 a.m. on the day of his ceremony, with the words: Honored. Ten years of work.

Ten does not reconcile with three degrees, which require nineteen. It does not reconcile with the academy's six years of existence. It is, however, the only figure anybody involved has put in writing, and this desk records that it is nine years short of the belt he is wearing in the picture he posted it under.

The post remains up. It has been seen, at the time of filing, three hundred and eleven million times.

The belts are real. The room was full each time. The applause in the photographs is genuine and we have no reason to think otherwise. What we have been unable to locate, across four weeks, four written requests, seventeen telephone calls, one federation register, one county occupancy record and three photographs of the same room, is any single person prepared to say on the record that they saw any of them train.