Elon Musk’s father suggests having babies should be more like breeding horses
The alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk framed the 2024 election and their bond has only deepened since.
Musk has been a regular fixture at the president-elect’s Florida mansion and the pair have introduced their families.
He has been privy to phone conversations with world leaders, consulted with Trump on his cabinet picks and even hosted him at Space X for the launch of the Starship rocket.
Musk will co-chair the new Department of Government Efficiency, charged with cutting government spending.
But how might the entrepreneur’s other views affect Trump policy?
Elon Musk secured the confidence of Donald Trump during his election campaign. Pic: Reuters
The cause closest to Musk’s heart is pronatalism, a pro-birth political and personal ideology in which reproduction is the key goal of humanity.
Musk regularly posts on social media with fears about population decline, sometimes bordering on obsession.
“Population collapse is coming… Earth is almost empty of humans,” he wrote recently.
“Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy we should teach fear of childlessness,” he added.
The frequency of these posts has increased in recent months.
Musk has at least 11 children, by three different women. Some of them have spent time with him in recent weeks at Donald Trump’s home.
Few understand the origin of Musk’s pro-birth views better than his own father, Errol Musk – an engineer and businessman from South Africa, who has a strained relationship with his son.
I speak to Errol on a video call from his home near Cape Town.
Errol Musk
“Elon doesn’t try to push his opinion across, but he will have an opinion,” he says.
Errol has seven children himself, ranging in age from Elon at 53 to his youngest daughter, who is five. He’s also a pronatalist.
“We’re not here to enjoy boating or flying or skiing or kite surfing, or something,” he says.
“We are here to continue being here. We should all be worried about declining populations, any country with any industry should be worried.”
Certain countries – like the United States, United Kingdom and Japan – do have ageing populations. But my conversation with Errol also reveals views which veer toward selective breeding.
I ask him about a comment Elon reportedly made to a biographer several years ago. Musk Jr apparently said: “If each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, then that’s probably bad.”
I ask Errol Musk if that viewpoint is bordering on eugenics.
“I wouldn’t call it eugenics as such, but every nation has practiced a certain form of survival of the fittest.
“One need only go to England and go to the Cheltenham area, the horse breeding area, and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to breed the horses anymore by any form of standard. I’ve got a few old horses I’ve found in Nigeria and we’re going to just mix them with your race horses…’
“They’ll say, no, no, no, no, no,” he added.
Elon Musk and his children
A more sanitised version of pro-family politics took centre stage on the campaign trail.
At a rally, Donald Trump declared himself “the father of fertilisation” and vowed to make in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for anyone who needs it.
Sky News has been invited inside an IVF clinic in California, the world capital for fertility.
The fertility institute is in the Encino area of Los Angeles and allows patients to choose the eye colour of their baby as well as its gender.
Dr Jeffrey Steinberg was among the first fertility doctors to offer gender selection. He is taking future President Trump’s pledge to offer free IVF at face value.
“Donald Trump for better or for worse, tends to keep his word. And the sort of the pooh-poohing of what he was saying… I think it’s vanished because they’re realising that it’s probably going to happen. So all the fertility centres are gearing up for a huge surge.”
Elon Musk has donated millions of dollars to fertility research.
“Musk is a technocrat,” Dr Steinberg says. “He’s an intellectual genius in multiple areas. And everything he touches seems to turn to gold.
“There’s not much that evolves as quickly as Musk’s technology. But IVF has done that, and I think he’s going to find that very attractive.”
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Not all agree that encouraging people to have as many children as possible is the way forward when it comes to population decline.
“There’s some catastrophic thinking that goes on in the tech bro space of Silicon Valley and so on, and it’s usually not very practically oriented,” says Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at Maryland University.
“If you really tried to promote pronatalism, inevitably what you end up doing is promoting a retrograde sort of anti-feminism,” he says.


“So it ends up being how can we convince women to have more children, which ends up being how can we have women out of the workforce, at home more, married younger, all the things that are sort of rolling back the progress that we made with regard to women’s equality in the last 100 years. And so that’s my primary concern.
“The other is that it goes along with sort of a virulent nationalism that usually is not very far from racism and white supremacy.
“The idea of not just more births, but a certain kind of births, a certain kind of family. And it has not led to good outcomes in modern society when right-wing governments try to promote higher birth rates.”
While espousing his pronatalist views, Musk is navigating his own complicated family dynamic.
In the hills outside Austin, Texas, there are rumours he’s bought a multi-million-dollar compound to house some of his children and their mothers together, with his own property 10 minutes away.
Musk denies this is true.
But soon he could be helping to design family policy across the country.
World
Hamas releases last hostages included in first phase of ceasefire – as hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are freed
Hamas has handed the last four Israeli hostage bodies that were included in the first phase of the ceasefire deal to the Red Cross.
The bodies of four Israeli men have been handed over in exchange for the release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners.
A Red Cross convoy carrying dozens of released prisoners has been seen leaving Israel’s Ofer prison in the West Bank before arriving in the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
The group got off the bus to cheers from hundreds congregated outside, with some of the released men – clad in green jackets and keffiyehs – hoisted aloft by the crowd.
It was not immediately clear when the next detainees would be released.
Meanwhile, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the country had received the four bodies.
It said in a statement: “The coffins were handed over to the IDF at the Kerem Shalom crossing through Egyptian mediation. An initial identification process has now begun on Israeli territory.
“The families of the abductees are being continuously updated on the situation and will be given an official notification at the end of the full identification process.
“The public is asked to respect the families’ privacy and refrain from spreading rumours and information that is not official and well-founded. We will continue to update with reliable information in the future.”
The handover would complete both sides’ obligations under the Gaza ceasefire’s first phase, during which Hamas agreed to return 33 hostages, including eight bodies, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinian prisoners released from West Bank
Hours before the four bodies were transferred on Wednesday, the family of hostage Tsachi Idan said in a statement: “Our family has received with great sadness Hamas’s announcement that our beloved Tsachi is no longer alive and that his body will be returned to Israel during the night.”
It continued: “Since Tsachi was kidnapped, we received several signs of life, and in the previous deal last November, Tsachi was alive and expected to be released.
“We appreciate the tremendous love and support we are receiving from the citizens of Israel, the media, and the Nahal Oz community.”
The body of Tsachi Idan has been handed over. Pic: Bring Them Home
Egyptian mediators had earlier confirmed that they secured a breakthrough that would allow the handover of the final four hostage bodies due in the first phase of the deal after a days-long impasse.
Hamas said an agreement had been reached for the exchange of hostages for prisoners, but said their release would be conducted under a new mechanism.
It said the European Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza was preparing to receive prisoners after their release.
Israel had previously refused to release more than 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Saturday after accusing Hamas of breaching the ceasefire deal by staging what it considered an offensive public handover of hostages in Gaza.
The staged ceremonies in which living hostages and coffins containing hostage remains were displayed on stage before a crowd in Gaza drew strong criticism, including from the United Nations.
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Gaza hostage family mourned in Israel
Days earlier, the ceasefire deal which came into effect on 19 January was held up briefly when Hamas handed over the remains of an unidentified woman instead of mother-of-two Shiri Bibas before delivering the correct body the next day.
With the 42-day truce due to expire on Saturday, it also remains unclear whether an extension will be agreed or whether negotiations can begin on a second stage of the deal, which would see the release of the final 59 hostages left in Gaza.
Read more:
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Hamas said that, so far, it had not received any proposal for the second stage.
Despite numerous hiccups, the ceasefire deal has so far held up.
But moving to a second phase would require agreements on issues that have proved impossible to bridge in the past, including the post-war future of Gaza and Hamas, which Israel has vowed to eliminate as a governing force.
Underlining the precariousness of the ceasefire, the Israeli military said a projectile was fired from Gaza but fell within
the enclave. It said it was investigating the incident.
The exchange comes on the same day as the funeral for Ms Bibas and her two sons – four-year-old Ariel, and nine-month-old Kfir – who came to symbolise the trauma felt by many Israelis after the 7 October attack.
Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs on the EU “very soon” and claimed the bloc was “formed in order to screw the United States”.
The US president made the remarks while holding his first cabinet meeting at the White House since his inauguration in January.
The world’s richest man Elon Musk, who leads the US Department of Government Efficiency but is not a cabinet member, was among those present.
During his second term as president, Mr Trump has sparked fears of a global trade war by either imposing, or threatening to impose, high tariffs on both America’s allies and geopolitical rivals.
Earlier this month the US government imposed 25% tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on imports from China.
Beijing retaliated by imposing 10% duties on many US imports and 15% tariffs on coal and liquefied natural gas.
Meanwhile, the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada were paused after agreements were reached on border security.
‘They’ve taken advantage of us’
Asked whether he had made a decision about imposing tariffs on the European Union, Mr Trump said: “We have made a decision, we’ll be announcing it very soon and it will be 25% generally speaking and that will be on cars and all other things.
“The European Union is a different case than Canada, a different kind of case, they’ve really taken advantage of us in a different way.
“They don’t accept our cars, they don’t accept essentially our farm products. They use all sorts of reasons why not, and we accept everything from them, and we have about a $300bn (£237bn) deficit with the European Union.”
He added: “The European Union, it was formed in order to screw the United States.
“Let’s be honest – the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it, but now I’m president.”
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Putin is ‘very cunning’
Asked what he will do if the EU retaliates, Mr Trump said: “They can’t, I mean, they can try, but they can’t.”
He added: “They can retaliate, but it cannot be a successful retaliation, because we just go cold turkey, we don’t buy anymore.
“If that happens, we win.”
The threat of tariffs comes at a time of fragile relations between the US and Europe as the Trump administration appears to favour Moscow over Kyiv as it tries to bring about peace in Ukraine.
Mr Trump shocked European leaders last week by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator with no elections”.
Mr Zelenskyy accused the US president of living in a Russian-made “disinformation space”.
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Elon Musk speaks at the cabinet meeting. Pic: AP
Ukraine to sign ‘very big’ deal
Asked at the cabinet meeting about security guarantees the US might be willing to offer Ukraine as part of peace negotiations, Mr Trump said: “I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much.
“We’re going to have Europe do that, because we’re talking about Europe as the next-door neighbour.”
Mr Trump also said Mr Zelenskyy will visit the US on Friday to sign a “very big” minerals deal.
The US president views the transaction with Ukraine as a fair way to recoup the billions of dollars that America has given Kyiv – via weapons and financial support – to help in their fight against Russia.
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Mr Trump went on to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “very smart” and “very cunning person” during the cabinet meeting.
He said: “I think he wanted the whole (of Ukraine) when I got elected, (then) we spoke, and I think we’re going to have a deal.”
Ukraine NATO membership ruled out
Mr Trump also said he believes Mr Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he was US president at the time.
Asked whether Ukraine could gain NATO membership, the US president said: “You can forget about it. That’s probably the reason the whole thing started.”
Mr Trump declined to comment when asked about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force.
“I never comment on that,” said. “I don’t want to ever put myself in that position.”
Mr Musk spoke briefly at the start of the meeting to explain why he believes the controversial cost-cutting measures his department has been carrying out have been necessary.
Cabinet members were then asked by reporters if they were happy with Mr Musk and how he has been carrying out his role.
Mr Musk started to answer the question, but Mr Trump interjected and said he might want to let cabinet members answer, before joking that if anyone disagreed, he might “throw them out”.
World
Trump shares AI video of Gaza vision featuring golden statues, bearded belly dancers and Netanyahu on a sunbed
Donald Trump has shared a bizarre AI-generated video on his Truth Social platform showcasing what appears to be a vision of Gaza under his proposed plan.
The footage, which the 78-year-old shared without comment, shows the war-ravaged territory before a caption appears: “Gaza 2025… What’s Next?”
It then goes on to show the area transformed into a Middle Eastern paradise with exotic beaches, Dubai-style skyscrapers, luxury yachts and people partying.
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
It includes a “Trump Gaza” tower and a gigantic, golden statue of the US president – with miniature versions on sale in a souvenir gift shop.
A child is also shown walking in a street, holding a huge, golden balloon of the president’s head.
The video also features the world leader dancing with a scantily clad belly dancer in a bar – and sunbathing and sipping cocktails by a hotel resort pool with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Elon Musk appears in the footage several times – sitting on a beach eating humous with flatbreads as bearded belly dancers perform on the sand.
The billionaire boss of X, Tesla and SpaceX – who also leads the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which has been tasked with cutting government spending – is also shown throwing dollar bills in the air for people.
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
A song written for the video also plays in the background.
The lyrics go: “Donald’s coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear: Trump Gaza’s finally here.
“Trump Gaza’s shining bright, golden future, a brand new life.
“Feast and dance the deal is done, Trump Gaza number one.”
Sky News has established the video was first shared online in early February by accounts with no apparent connection to the White House.
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What you need to know about Trump’s Gaza plan
Mr Trump announced his plan – for when the war between Israel and Hamas ends – earlier this year.
It includes relocating two million Gazans to neighbouring Arab countries and developing the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East“.
He described Gaza as a “demolition site” where “virtually every building is down”.
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
Pic: TruthSocial/@donaldtrump
Laying out his idea of what would happen beyond an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, he proposed: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.”
He said America would be “responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site”, before it would “get rid of the destroyed buildings”, and “level it out”.
“Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs,” he added.
The White House described the proposal as “out-of-the-box” and “visionary” – but it was condemned as the effective “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from Gaza.
Hamas described the proposals as “ridiculous and absurd” in a statement from one of its officials.
Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which as fellow Arab nations support the Palestinian cause, also rejected Mr Trump’s plan.
Read more:
Analysis: Trump’s Gaza plan is so outrageous it might be something bigger
There was a mixed reaction to the video in the comments section below.
One person wrote: “I don’t think that’s funny or cool. Sorry. Am I missing something??? I hope it’s a joke a bad joke..”
“I hate this. I love our president, but this is horrible,” said another.
One Truth Social user wrote: “Mr President while I appreciate what you do, is not about you. To God be the glory and the honor, for without Him, you couldn’t have accomplished anything. The statue is a symbol of the antichrist, please humble yourself to God. Jesus is king and only Him.”
“You’re doing great Mr President. But don’t let it get to your head. God put you in that position for His Glory, not yours,” said another.
“Can we transform our US cities to look like this 2025 vision first? Our cities are dumps with ugly buildings and homeless people,” wrote one user.
“Everything looks good, just stay away from these guys,” said another, reposting a screengrab of the bearded belly dancers.
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