My son Elon called me ‘pure evil’ when he was a raging liberal. Now he’s Trump’s First Buddy, I get to hear just what Donald’s going to do to his enemies! Musk senior reveals all about his billionaire son in no-holds barred interview

You’d be hard pushed to describe Elon Musk or his straight-talking South African father Errol as particularly emotional men.

Yet earlier this year, father and son, who spectacularly fell out when Elon was ‘a super-Leftie liberal’ (his 78-year-old dad’s words), shared a hug for the first time in many years.

The embrace, which happened in March at a party to mark the first successful test flight of Elon’s rocket Starship, took place in front of several hundred of the tech billionaire’s staff at his space exploration company SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas.

‘There were about 300 people and everyone was having a good time because the launch was quite a big success,’ says Errol. 

‘Then, Elon stops the event. He’s a little bit taller than me now, but he puts his arm around me and says, ‘This is my dad, everyone. He taught me everything I know about engineering.’ He was pretty emotional.

‘I was quite overwhelmed myself. I said to the crowd, ‘No, no, Elon taught himself.’ I had to say that.’

He throws his head back and laughs. ‘My second wife, Heide, and our daughters were with us. They were in tears. We all were.’

Errol is, after all, the father Elon once condemned as ‘pure evil’.

‘I think for the first time Elon was accepting who he is,’ says Errol now. ‘Until recently, he’s been a sort of character on a stage. 

‘When you come from South Africa, Lefties think you’re a Nazi. To succeed, you need to be accepted by them so my sons, [Elon and younger brother Kimbal, a hugely successful restaurateur], started to become these flaming liberals – turning away from South Africa and their roots, which included me.

‘Finally, Elon was embracing his heritage and his destiny.’

Four months later, Elon, the richest man on the planet whose formidable business empire includes the electric car company Tesla (worth more than $1trillion), SpaceX (which has 24,000 satellites circling Earth) and ‘X’, formerly Twitter, threw his support behind Donald Trump in his fight for the White House.

Today he stands as the President-elect’s ‘First Buddy’ having spent nearly every day since Trump’s election victory at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Elon has also accompanied Trump to New York City and Washington DC and even joined his call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Or, as his dad says, ‘Although Elon’s not vice-president, he’s like Trump’s right-hand man. With Trump in office, the Ukraine war will end very, very soon, maybe even this year.’

Errol speaks with authority. He has spent several months in the States in the past year and shares emails with his son who, he tells me, ‘Does his work in the air. His office is his jet. He has a masseuse and a chef who travel with him. The jet inside is like being in the finest five-star lounge imaginable. It enables him to be in touch with everybody around the world all the time.’

But Elon’s influence reaches far beyond planet Earth. ‘Elon is able to switch on and off the WiFi [from his Starlink satellite network] to the Ukraine,’ he says. ‘Last year he refused to let Starlink operate over the Crimea because of a plan to sink the Russian fleet in their home base. Putin thanked him. So, Elon has tremendous power with Starlink.

‘I’m sure Elon, Trump and others will find a solution.’

Errol last spoke to his eldest son a few days after the election. A fervid Trump supporter himself, Errol was cock-a-hoop that he was back in power. He tells me he spoke to Elon for ‘a few minutes’.

‘A few minutes of his time is worth 24 hours or more of other people’s time,’ he says. ‘I was saying, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible. You’ve done such a good job.’ He said, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done.’ Then we spoke about the family and Tesla.’

Tesla’s value has soared by more than 20 per cent in the past month.

‘Elon’s assets are now $80billion more than there were, but he wouldn’t be the man he is today if it wasn’t for me,’ says Errol without a hint of irony. ‘I look at Elon now and say he’s a better version of me. He’s less mercurial. People who know us say he’s a clone. He is exactly like me.’

Errol is talking to me from his fabulous open plan house on the coast of the Western Cape, South Africa, where the kitchen is littered with cards from and photographs of his seven children and many grandchildren.

‘Sixteen or 17,’ he says, smiling. ‘I lose count.’

This Christmas three of his daughters – Elon’s sister Tosca and two half-sisters – and their families ‘are coming en masse’ to celebrate with him.

Rather than digging into the family turkey, Elon will be busy stripping the fat from the ‘bloated’ US federal government as he and fellow billionaire and former presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which will target $500 billion in cuts.

Trump calls it the ‘Manhattan Project of our time’, the name given to the programme to create nuclear weapons.

‘These organisations are bloated, out of control,’ says Errol. ‘But it’s not just about trimming staff. In engineering, we have what is called time and motion studies, making sure things are done in a better way.

‘Elon thinks woke is a joke. He’s said it’s got to end. I forget his exact words, but he’s starting a war on woke. He says woke has taken his oldest son from him.’

He’s referring to Elon’s trans daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who he’s said on ‘X’ has been ‘killed by the woke mind virus’.

Wilson, who sought court approval in California to change her name and denounced her father in 2022, has said she plans to leave the States after Trump’s victory.

‘Elon didn’t spend much time with his children who are now in their 20s – not like I did with him and his brother,’ says Errol, with a sort of ‘more-fool-him’ shake of his head.

Elon, whose parents divorced in 1979, began living with Errol – a wealthy former engineer who also part owned an emerald mine – at his stud farm where ‘pretty women were coming and going’ from the age of nine.

He was 12 years old when his brother, Kimbal, joined him. Their colourful, live-life-with-no-limits childhood was one of private jets, boats, horses and many, many women. How many?

‘After 200 you stop counting,’ says Errol. ‘If you see an ocean, cross it. If you see a lake, water-ski on it. If you see a mountain, climb it. Let’s see how high it is up there. I’d say I passed that attitude to my sons. But Elon’s older children don’t know him.’

Elon has five older children with first wife writer Justine Wilson – 20-year old twins and 18-year-old triplet sons. 

He also has three younger ones with his ex-partner, singer Grimes – a four-year-old son X, a daughter nicknamed Y, who turns three next month, and two-year-old son Tau.

Elon, who like Errol is passionate about pro-natalism, a movement that encourages larger families in the face of perceived population decline, is also a father to two-year-old twins and a baby with Shivon Zillis, a 38-year-old executive at his braintech company Neuralink.

‘I’m proud I took them [his two eldest sons] to school and fetched them every day,’ says Errol. ‘They are who they are because I spent every day with them.

‘I’ve told Elon I’m glad he’s taking little X around everywhere although it kind of worries me because he’s taking him to adult events and he’s only four. But he wants to make sure he’s more hands on with this one. He wants to ensure, I think, that he’s got an heir he can depend on.’

Errol tells me his son is ‘black and white’ with no ‘grey’ areas.

‘Elon used to be such a flaming Democrat,’ says Errol. ‘That’s why my relationship with my sons changed. It started with differences over Donald Trump on my 70th birthday.’

Elon, freshly divorced from British actress Talulah Riley, was besotted with Amber Heard, when he hired a swish restaurant in Cape Town with his brother Kimbal to celebrate their father’s birthday in 2016 with 40 guests including Hollywoood royalty such as Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence along with Amber.

‘They came to Cape Town on private jets. These were the people Elon liked to be with – bleeding heart, super-Leftist people.’ It was just before the US presidential election and someone said to Errol, ‘I believe you support Trump.’

He remembers the question triggered laughter. He answered, ‘Actually I do.’

After lunch, he says, both sons were very upset. ‘I’ve never heard my son Kimbal swear but he swore that day, ‘Are you f****** stupid? How can you possibly say that to these people? It was afterwards that Elon gave an interview saying I was evil. He’d been brainwashed into thinking that was the only way he could keep those friends.’

In the following five years, Errol went to the States ‘at least twice’ to speak to his sons. ‘They were just angry. Since then, they’ve totally changed their tune. Not only reversed but reversed and run right over me in that direction.’

Errol was first aware of the sea change in his sons’ political allegiances at the end of 2021 when President Biden failed to invite Elon to a four-day electric car manufacturers’ seminar at the White House. ‘There was talk about turning the United States into an electric car country by 2035 and he invited all the other companies – General Motors, Ford – but not Tesla.

‘Biden’s such an idiot. He announced that GM was the leading electric car manufacturer in the U.S. They’d built something like 26 cars that year. Elon was really shocked. Tesla had built a million cars that year. He started making political statements. 

‘I contacted him in early 2022 and said, ‘You do realise you’re making pretty outlandish political statements? Do you have good bodyguards? They’ll kill you in this business.’ He listened.’

Today, Errol tells me, Elon’s home in Boca Chica, Texas, is constructed from ‘two sorts of knock-ups from the factory. Each has a little kitchen, a little lounge and two tiny bedrooms.

‘They put them close to each other with a nine or ten foot gap in between where they’ve lain some sort of floor and set up a barbecue and chairs. There’s a little pitch roof over it.

‘That’s where they sit in the evening. He stays in one with his little boy X and a couple of bodyguards. Several other bodyguards stay in the other unit,’ he says.

‘He also started looking around and saw all the trouble that was coming his way from Twitter, where he was being denounced.

‘Elon said, ‘If that’s what they’re doing at Twitter, I’m going to buy it and put an end to this rubbish.’ He bought the site in October 2022 for £44billion.

Twitter, which Elon renamed X, was, of course, powerfully instrumental in sweeping Donald Trump to the White House.

And now, says Errol, those vocal opponents of Trump will have to pay. ‘People are going to have to answer for what they’ve done.’

People? Errol ticks off a list of those the incoming administration intend to ‘bring to book’. 

They include just about everybody with whom Trump and Elon have crossed swords from President Biden to director of the FBI Christopher Wray to Sir Keir Starmer.

‘Communication between Starmer’s government and Trump’s government is, at the present time, almost impossible,’ says Errol. ‘I can’t see Starmer staying in government for more than a few more months.

‘It’s impossible. How can they [Trump’s administration] deal with him after what his people, his ministers have said? You can’t deal with people who have declared themselves your outright enemy.’

Errol is, of course, referring to senior Labour ministers’ previous tweets about the President-elect. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner tweeted, ‘I am so happy to see the back of Donald Trump,’ at the inauguration of Joe Biden; Foreign Secretary David Lammy called Trump ‘a racist and KKK/neo-Nazi sympathiser’ while Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds accused Trump of ‘bigotry’ before failing to invite Elon to the UK government’s International Investment Summit this summer.

And he does have links to this country. Errol’s mother came from Liverpool and he spent much of his early childhood near Bristol.

‘We’ve always liked the UK. I took Elon there when he was six but we don’t relate to what’s happening there now.’

Errol shakes his head but his eyes brighten when I bring the conversation back to his son.

‘Elon is unique. There is no way of comparing him to anybody else. He’s not eligible for the presidency because he wasn’t born in the States, but his mother’s father was so, it’s conceivable, they might make an exception for him as he’s a direct line descendant.’

Do I detect a gleam in this old rogue’s eyes? ‘At the moment I just hope he dodges the bullets that are going to come his way,’ he says. ‘The fictional bullets and those that are real.

‘People ask if I’m proud of Elon’s success. I was proud of him the day he was born. I’m happy for him but, as a parent, you just want your child to be safe and well.’

And, in this case, at the right hand of the next leader of the free world.