Elon Musk Biography Rife With Egregious Behavior, Billionaire Fallouts, Sexual Fantasies

In spite of every New York Times and Atlantic thinkpiece musing about who Elon Musk really is, he’s actually fairly simple: He’s a wealth-hoarding, billionaire egomaniac; a raging transphobe; an alleged sexual harasser; and, by most accounts (including his own), a bad dad.

Nonetheless, we have now been gifted (???) a trove of new information that more or less backs all of this up via Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk, a biography of the Tesla CEO and Twitter (or X) owner that’s out this week. Anyone navigating Bill Gates’ internet has surely seen some snippets by now, namely that Musk and Grimes secretly welcomed their third child together. Speaking of Gates, he and Musk apparently don’t like each other very much ever since a fun falling-out that’s detailed in Isaacson’s book (and which I’ve included in this slideshow).

All of this intel is predictably, ominously wacky and provides too deep a glimpse into the sexual proclivities of a man I have never wanted to picture naked. At some point, it becomes hard to scandalize the world when it comes to Elon since he—and those in his orbit—devote little effort toward hiding what a pompous asshole he is. Grimes has (affectionately) described being in a relationship with him as an “internship.” His first wife said Musk once told her if she were his employee he’d fire her. Isaacson’s bio tells a number of stories in this vein. Still, even given everything we already know about this man, some manage to shock. I’ve gathered those stand-out stories as reported by Isaacson in Elon Musk and excerpted by various publications here.

In 2016, Amber Heard began a relationship with Musk shortly after the end of her marriage to Johnny Depp, who she accused of rape and abuse (he denied the accusations). Much of her and Musk’s on again, off again relationship remained fairly mysterious, save for rumors about an alleged legal dispute over frozen embryos. They separated by 2018. Musk said of Heard and Depp during their 2022 defamation trial: “At their best, they are each incredible.” But while Musk had nothing specifically negative to say about Heard for the book (only that the relationship was “brutal”), his brother was unsparing.

“It’s really sad that he falls in love with these people who are really mean to him,” Kimbal Musk told Isaacson. “They’re beautiful, no question, but they have a very dark side and Elon knows they are toxic.” Isaacson writes about a particular instance in December 2017, when Kimbal and his family joined Musk and Heard on holiday, and Heard at one point allegedly locked herself in a room and expressed fear that she would be “attacked” and that Musk had stolen her passport. “She really is a good actress... The way she can create her own reality reminds me of my dad,” Kimbal said, referencing his and Musk’s allegedly abusive father, Errol. More than anything, the incident Isaacson as describes it sounds like a trauma response to years of the alleged physical and psychic violence that Heard experienced in her relationship with Depp.

Kimbal further referred to Heard as “just so toxic” and “a nightmare,” while Musk’s chief of staff likened her to “the Joker.” I’ll let it speak for itself that these men say all this about a survivor but have plenty of flattering words for Musk, an alleged sexual harasser.

But some of the nastiest comments about Heard in Isaacson’s book come from Grimes, another of Musk’s exes. Grimes somehow refers to herself as “chaotic good,” despite publicly supporting and often justifying Musk’s bigotry. For example, she previously defended his transphobia by claiming he’s just concerned about trans kids’ future reproductive capacities, which, ew.

By contrast, she regards Heard as “chaotic evil” and implies that Heard abused Musk, like his dad: “It’s about his father and what he grew up with, and he is quick to fall back into being treated badly,” Grimes told Isaacson. “He associates love with being mean or abusive. There’s an Errol-Amber through line.”

Around 2020, Musk’s daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson came out as trans and then cut off ties with Musk—and the billionaire blamed her ostensibly liberal Los Angeles private school and her “full communist” politics for this. According to Isaacson, it was around this time that something shifted in Musk, and eradicating the “woke mind virus” suddenly became front of mind.

While Musk has previously shrugged off his daughter’s estrangement from him, callously saying you “can’t win them all,” he claimed to Isaacson that he’s tried his best to have a relationship with her. “I’ve made many overtures. But she doesn’t want to spend time with me,” he said. Hmm. I wonder if his rabidly anti-trans social media posts and very public fraternization with anti-trans bigots has anything to do with that???

Isaacson’s book notes throughout that Musk is prone to mood swings, teetering between “light and dark, intense and goofy, detached and emotional, with occasional plunges into what people around him call ‘demon mode.’” At one point in the book, Musk tells Isaacson he has bipolar disorder, which comes a couple of years after he revealed he has Asperger’s on Saturday Night Live in 2021.

Last year, we experienced a moment of collective disruption when it was reported that in 2021, one of Musk’s employees—Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis—had given birth to his twins. Well, here’s a neat (and by neat, I mean very messy) twist: It turns out that as Zilis gave birth, Grimes and Musk’s surrogate was down the hall in the same maternity ward. And Grimes, who was friends with Zilis, didn’t even know this. Isaacson reported that Grimes learned of Zilis’ twins, presumably conceived while she and Musk were still together, with the rest of us. Zilis and Grimes feuded, did some soul-searching, and have assured us they are now on good terms, but none of that changes how Musk is clearly a raging natalist asshole.

It’s always your own people (in this case, billionaires)... According to Isaacson, Gates and Musk arranged a visit in 2022 to talk about Gates’ position that Musk should be more active in philanthropy, particularly around climate. The conversation did not go well. Musk argued that “most philanthropy was bullshit,” and, hey, I don’t love that we’re forced to rely on the charity of billionaires either. But if you’re not going to pay appropriate taxes and you’re against personally redistributing any of your wealth, maybe you’re just an asshole!

Further, Musk took issue with Gates maintaining a short bet in Tesla stock, aka betting against his company’s success. “It’s pure hypocrisy. Why make money on the failure of a sustainable energy car company?” Musk told his biographer. Musk seems to see his electric cars as the world’s savior, though of course it’s more complicated than that. In any case, to retaliate against Gates, Isaacson reports that Musk then tweeted a photo of Gates with a visibly protruding belly. Mature!

Zilis, the Neuralink exec with whom Musk shares twins, recounted to Isaacson how Musk had more or less recruited her (his employee) to have kids with him: “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” she said. This framing might sound innocent enough—if not very, very weird—on the surface. But coming from Musk, a white billionaire who’s heavily pushed fearmongering narratives about the birth rate and called on everyone to have more kids, all while opposing public resources to help people afford kids, we can understand it as thinly veiled bigotry.

As Insider has reported, multiple billionaires have spoken about their desire to take “control of human evolution,” and implied that their genes will save civilization as part of a eugenics-adjacent worldview. Sounds horrifying. And really puts Musk’s “smart people” comment in perspective!

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Musk is unpleasant to work for. “I knew I could either be working with him or be his friend, but not both,” Navaid Farooq, one of Musk’s first college friends, told Isaacson of his decision to quit working for Musk within six weeks. Farooq had briefly worked for Musk at his first company, Zip2, in 1995.

By all accounts, Farooq seems to have dodged a bullet: Not only is Musk a very public union buster but he’s also reportedly a horrible boss. Tesla allegedly fired workers for taking family and sick leave, fostered work environments rife with sexual harassment, and oversaw physically dangerous work conditions.

I deeply respect Amber Heard’s tolerance for bullshit, because, wow: Per one tidbit of Isaacson’s book, Musk once visited Heard in Australia where she was filming and encouraged her to obtain a costume to “roleplay” with him as the character Mercy from the video game Overwatch. (Apparently, she reminded him of the character.) I’m going to let that piece of information stand alone and do my utmost to picture anything but Musk in any sort of sexual scenario.

Shortly after this scoop from the biography circulated widely, Musk shared an intimate photo of Heard in the costume. A source close to Heard told Page Six that—as anyone could have guessed—Musk did not have Heard’s permission to share the photo. Hmm, if only I were surprised by this coming from Musk, who’s called “both” Heard and the man she says abused her “incredible” and done nothing to stop the misogynist smear campaigns targeting her on his social platform!

“I’m not Trump’s fan. He’s disruptive,” Musk told Isaacson, even as he confirmed that he didn’t vote for Joe Biden (or anyone) in the 2020 election, as he was registered to vote in California and saw the election as pointless. (Wrong! Local and statewide ballot measures and offices matter!!!) Isaacson further wrote that Musk holds a “deep disdain” for Trump, “whom he considered a con man” and “kind of nuts”—compared to Musk, who is very normal and even-keeled, mind you.

Note that Musk doesn’t oppose Trump because of his bigoted social and economic policies, but because the famously ~populist~ former president was “disruptive.” I’d argue disruption—with the right platform—can actually be a good thing. Unless, that is, you’re a right-wing billionaire who benefits from the status quo.

Per the biography, while Grimes underwent a C-section to deliver their son X Æ A-Xii in 2020, Musk took photos and sent them to the couple’s family members, much to the singer’s chagrin. “He was just clueless about why I’d be upset,” she told Isaacson. And then she went on to have two more children with him.

The one (1) single thing I’ll give Musk is that I’m with him on his dad, Errol, being the worst. Errol is currently married to a woman who used to be his stepdaughter, was allegedly abusive toward Musk’s mother, and has very publicly disparaged and even body-shamed his son. But, despite Musk’s apparent disinterest in having a relationship with him, Errol continues to try to contact him. On Father’s Day last year, Isaacson reports that he sent an email to Musk that called Joe Biden a “freak, criminal, pedophile president.” Compelling stuff; surely that will heal the broken father-son relationship...

This man should have many regrets, like buying Twitter and eradicating two-thirds of its value, or being so transphobic and terrible that his kid cut him off. But apparently, a really big regret of his is this, which is interesting: that he tweeted a baseless conspiracy theory last fall that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, had been attacked by a male prostitute he’d hired, commenting, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” He went on to delete the tweet, but according to Isaacson, “said privately that it was one of his dumbest mistakes.” Ya don’t say!