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When Australian radio talk show hosts asked Elon Musk's dad for his thoughts on his son's life and career, he didn't hold back. He said he wasn't proud of the billionaire businessman and liked his brother Kimbal more.
Errol Musk, who is 79 years old, gave a brutally honest 20-minute interview to Kyle and Jackie O's show on the Australian radio station KIIS FM on Monday. In the interview, he talked down his son Elon's success and made fun of his looks, saying that he told Elon, who is 50 years old, to take diet pills after seeing photos of him shirtless on a boat in Greece.
“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?” presenter Jackie O asked the South African patriarch.
“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 replied.
Errol's first wife, Maye Musk, gave birth to Elon, who is his oldest son. They also have a daughter, Tosca, and a son, Kimbal, who the dad called his "pride and joy" during the strange interview.
Kimbal Musk is a chef and restaurant owner who is 49 years old. In the US, he runs The Kitchen Restaurant Group. Elon Musk has a net worth of $271,2 billion, which makes him the richest person in the world. His net worth is about $700 million.
Errol also has five children with other people, including his two youngest sons and a daughter he had with his 34-year-old stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, in the past few years.
When asked about that unusual relationship, the self-admitted “ladies’ man” insisted that it was “completely normal,” despite the 42-year age gap and Bezuidenhout being his stepchild.
Errol said during the interview that his son Elon feels as though he is running five years behind schedule in his career — and he said he agreed with that assessment.
“He is frustrated with progress and it’s understandable,” the father said. “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.”
Errol also said that he worries that Elon, who has nine children with four different women but is currently single, won't be able to find a partner who is willing to give up her career to be with him all the time.
The father said of his firstborn, "I worry about him," and added, "He loves people, he loves humanity."
When asked what he thought about recent photos from Greece that showed the Tesla and SpaceX founder relaxing topless on a luxury yacht in Mykonos, the man in his 70s made fun of the way his eldest child looks.
“Elon is very strongly built but he’s been eating badly,” his dad opined, adding that he has touted to Elon the purported weight loss properties of a supplement called garcinia cambogia.
When the talk show hosts asked Errol if he drove a Tesla, he said that he did not own one of his son's popular electric cars. Instead, he owns a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce, and a Mercedes, he said.
Errol Musk said that even though his son Elon is the richest person in the world, Elon does not give him money for nothing.
“We are a very frugal, stingy family,” the wealthy South African engineer stressed. “If I want to spend anything, I have to answer 100 questions of why.”
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