Though Elon Musk disputes various claims about his life story, one thing is perfectly clear: he has immense daddy issues.
"Almost every crime you can possibly think of, [my father] has done," Musk told Rolling Stone in 2017 — reportedly while crying — of his father, a South African wheeler-dealer who has several children with his own stepdaughter. "Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done."
"I tried threats, rewards, and arguments to change my father for the better," Musk later told biographer Walter Isaacson. "No way, it just got worse."
It's been hard not to think of that dynamic while watching Musk's strident embrace of Donald Trump's dark agenda. As the SpaceX and Tesla CEO spent an eyewatering $200 million supporting Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and effectively turned Twitter-formerly-X into a far-right megaphone, it's often felt like the troubled Musk is embracing Trump as some sort of disturbing father figure.
In turn, Trump can often sound more enthusiastic about Musk than he does about his own children — including, as Guardian columnist Marina Hyde recently pointed out, in ways that feel like they're eclipsing the future president's rapport with his own eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
"Exciting to be the eldest child then to suddenly gain a new big brother!" Hyde wrote. "Especially one who your dad wants to involve in absolutely everything while you act super cool about it." (Trump also had a strange relationship with his own dad, Fred Trump.)
Adding to the warped family dynamic is the fact that Musk has been pointedly restrained in his public appreciation for any of his 11 known children — other than a marked favoritism toward his eccentrically-named son X Æ A-12, whose mother Claire "Grimes" Boucher worried to Vanity Fair about being overexposed and treated "as a protégé."
In fact, Musk can even be openly antagonistic toward his own kids. He's become estranged with his daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson over her gender transition, publicly deadnaming and misgendering her and raging that she was "killed by the woke mind virus." (Wilson has fired back, saying Musk has behaved abusively and describing him as a "delusional and grubby little control freak.")
Watching Musk's whirlwind embrace of Trump's extreme worldview, that debris field of family dysfunction starts to take on a different quality. Is Musk really concerned about falling birthrates and social progressivism from a point of view of rational policy, or has he just found a more responsive daddy — not to mention one whose affection he can buy — in Trump's strongman image?
Despite Musk's undying admiration and fountains of money, though, he may yet flame out with yet another father figure. Trump has reportedly been ignoring his team's swelling frustration with the billionaire, giving Musk a dubious official position while publicly ribbing him in a way that sounds a bit like a warning.
Musk may need Trump, in other words. But whether Trump still needs Musk is another question entirely — and if the relationship does break down, only one thing is certain: never expect psychological stability from the richest man in the world.
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