Elon Musk’s estranged father dropped several serious bombshells in a wide-ranging, uncensored interview on the web series “Podcast and Chill with MacG,” earlier this month.
During the interview with podcaster Macgyver Mukwevho, businessman and politician Errol Musk claimed that tension between him and his son began over Errol’s support for president-elect Donald Trump, who he called a “good man” and “solid businessman.”
“He was just brainwashed by those Democrats,” the elder Musk said of his son at the time, who has turned from a Democratic donor to one of Trump’s most powerful supporters in recent years.
In fact, Elon Musk campaigned so hard for Trump this year that he earned an unofficial role in the next presidential administration as the co-leader of the newly minted “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Elsewhere during the conversation, Errol Musk remembered his son as a “typical boy,” though one with no filter.
Asked if the tech billionaire was bullied as a child, as Musk has claimed, his father remembered things a bit differently.
“No, that’s another story that’s not exactly true,” Errol Musk said.
According to the elder Musk, one high school-era incident Elon has repeated — when a classmate pushed him down a stairwell, leaving him hospitalized — actually began when Elon antagonized another boy about his father’s suicide.
“Some boy’s father had committed suicide and everyone knew, and Elon said to this boy, ‘Your father was stupid,’” Errol Musk said. He agreed that the man’s suicide was “stupid.” But even police and school authorities, he recalled, told Errol that “what Elon had said to this boy is too much. You can’t say that.”
During the interview, Errol Musk also cleared up some misconceptions about his involvement with the African emerald trade.
Elon Musk has repeatedly denied his father ever owned an emerald mine. But the older Musk — who did own a stake in an emerald mine in Zambia, according to Snopes — said that his son was fully aware of his father’s work in the precious gem industry and once even helped him broker a deal with Tiffany & Co.
“Elon knows all about the emeralds,” Errol Musk claimed. “It’s just because, you see, he wants to tell the people in America that he also had a hard time.”
In the freewheeling conversation, Musk also addressed his affair with his former stepdaughter, discussed his family’s ties to the South African apartheid regime and shared his opinions on Elon disowning his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson.
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