Which, in the era of social media, video surveillance, smartphones and dashcams, is crazy. Once you leave your home, you have to assume everything you do is recorded and might end up online or in court.
I don't think any human alive believes this. The "elite" are just known as being scammers who lie and BS about everything very openly and they'd sell their own child if it got them a dollar. The past 10 years have been nothing but "elites" churning scams and paying bribes and bragging about it. They most certainly aren't trusting each other. Just look at how the president holds people up as his greatest ally one day, then discards and villainizes them the next day once he realizes he can get more benefit from elsewhere.
The elite in-group trust hypothesis would however explain Musk sustaining an unreasonable Tesla share price in the face of falling sales, delayed launches to the extent competitors pre-empt him on his own announcements, and political toxicity to the extent his showrooms got smashed up and burned.