‘If I want to spend anything I have to answer 100 questions of why” – Elon Musk’s dad says he’s not proud of his son then defends having kids with stepdaughter as ‘completely normal’
Elon Musk’s father has stated that he isn’t proud of his billionaire son, claiming the Tesla CEO doesn’t just give him money without questionning him. He then explained why he married and had a baby with his stepdaughter in a candid radio interview.
Errol Musk, 76, called into the Kyle and Jackie O Show on Australian radio Monday morning, August 1, for a bizarre 20-minute interview.
The father of the Tesla CEO told the hosts Elon had ‘surpassed the mark’ of what he deemed success but said the Musk family had ‘been doing a lot of things for a long time’.
‘Your offspring is a genius. He’s worth so much money and has created so many things, you can’t take that away from him. Are you proud?’ one of the hosts asked.
He first deferred when asked where Elon got his genius from, suggesting it may have been the milk man who used to visit them rather than Errol or his mother Maye.
Errol Musk then declared he wasn’t proud: ‘No. You know, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time, it’s not as if we suddenly started doing something’.
Errol said his children have been doing ‘interesting things’ for a long time and he had not once received a handout from his billionaire son and that it was Elon’s younger brother Kimbal who was his ‘pride and joy’.
He also said that Kimbal himself is a billionaire, though not nearly as wealthy as Elon, the richest man on earth.
Errol said Elon isn’t as happy as he should be as the Space X founder thinks he is running five years behind schedule.
‘He is frustrated with progress and it’s understandable,’ the 76-year-old said.
When pressed on what Elon would be up to were he actually ‘on schedule’ he told Kyle and Jackie O he’d have his scholarship up long ago.
‘I know it sounds crazy, but we tend to think like that as a family. He’s 50 now and I still think of him as a little boy. But he’s 50, I mean that’s an old man.’
In reference to recent shirtless photos of his son on a boat in Greece, he said he had been encouraging his son to eat better and take a supplement.
‘Elon is very strongly built but he’s been eating badly,’ he told the hosts.
Errol even said he had recommended garcinia cambogia – a supplement that can supposedly aid weight loss without additional exercise or dieting – to his son.
When Musk was asked if he drove a Tesla, he replied he instead drove a Bentley, Rolls Royce and Mercedes-Benz.
He also said that his son doesn’t just give him money: ‘We are a very frugal, stingy family. If I want to spend anything I have to answer 100 questions of why,’ he explained.
‘Elon lives a very frugal life. He’s up at work at six o’clock.’
Errol said he worried Elon, who is currently single, will never find a woman who will give up her career to be part of his life, like Kimbal’s wife Cristiana Wyly had done despite being educated and having a Master’s Degree.
He did say of his son: ‘He loves people, he loves humanity’ and fondly remembered when he was 14 years old and it was his birthday, buying him a cassette by Louie Armstrong called ‘What a Wonderful World’.
‘She’s with him all the time and that’s very, very nice,’ he said of the couple. ‘Elon doesn’t [have that] and I worry about him’.
Errol Musk was then asked about his relationship with his 34-year-old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout – who he shares two young children with.
When one of the hosts suggested Jana was his biological daughter, Errol interjected: ‘No, no it’s completely normal,’ he said, despite the 42-year age gap.