‘I wouldn’t call it eugenics as such’: How Elon Musk’s views might influence Donald Trump’s policies
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 pro-natalist.
“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.”
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.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States, going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Pic: Reuters
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
Later on Monday, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Mr Trump and said he was “grateful” for the US president’s “readiness to help protect our people’s lives”.
After criticising Vladimir Putin’s “desire to drag it out”, he said he appreciated “preparing a new decision on Patriots for Ukraine” – and added Kyiv is “working on major defence agreements with America”.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump over Mr Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump threatens Russia with ‘severe’ tariffs’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call”, but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Mr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
US
Trump is clearly fed up with Putin – but will his shift in tone force Russia to the negotiating table?
As ever, there is confusion and key questions are left unanswered, but Donald Trump’s announcement on Ukraine and Russia today remains hugely significant.
His shift in tone and policy on Ukraine is stark. And his shift in tone (and perhaps policy) on Russia is huge.
Ever since Mr Trump returned to the White House he has flatly refused to side with Ukraine over the Russian invasion.
He has variously blamed Ukraine for the invasion and blamed Joe Biden for the invasion, but has never been willing to accept that Russia is the aggressor and that Ukraine has a legitimate right to defend itself.
Today, all that changed. In a clear signal that he is fed up with Vladimir Putin and now fully recognises the need to help Ukraine defend itself, he announced the US will dramatically increase weapons supplies to Kyiv.
Pic: Reuters
But, in keeping with his transactional nature and in a reflection of the need to keep his isolationist “America-First” base on side, he has framed this policy shift as a multi-billion dollar “deal” in which America gains financially.
American weapons are to be “sold” to NATO partners in Europe who will then either transfer them to Ukraine or use them to bolster their own stockpiles as they transfer their own existing stocks to Kyiv.
“We’ve made a deal today,” the president said in the Oval Office. “We are going to be sending them weapons, and they are paying for them. We are manufacturing, they are going to be paying for it. Our meeting last month was very successful… these are wealthy nations.”
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What will Trump’s weapons deal mean for Ukraine?
This appears to be a clever framing of the “deal”. Firstly, America has always benefited financially by supplying weapons to Ukraine because much of the investment has been in American factories, American jobs and American supply chains.
While the details are not entirely clear, the difference now appears to be that the weapons would be bought by the Europeans or by NATO as an alliance.
The Americans are the biggest contributor to NATO, and so if the alliance is buying the weapons, America too will be paying, in part, for the weapons it is selling.
However, if the weapons are being bought by individual NATO members to replenish their own stocks, then it may be the case that the US is not paying.
NATO officials referred all questions on this issue to the White House, which has not yet provided clarity to Sky News.
It is also not yet clear what type of weapons will be made available and whether it will include offensive, as well defensive, munitions.
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Will Trump’s deal make a difference?
A key element of the package will likely be Patriot missile batteries, 10 to 15 of which are believed to be currently in Europe.
Under this deal, it is understood that some of them will be added to the six or so batteries believed to be presently in Ukraine. New ones would then be purchased from US manufacturers to backfill European stocks. A similar arrangement may be used for other weapons.
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The president also issued the Russian leader with an ultimatum, saying that Putin had 50 days to make a peace deal or else face 100% “secondary tariffs”. It’s thought this refers to a plan to tariff, or sanction, third countries that supply Russia with weapons and buy Russian oil.
This, the Americans hope, will force those countries to apply pressure on Russia.
But the 50-day kicking of the can down the road also gives Russia space to prevaricate. So, a few words of caution: first, the Russians are masters of prevarication. Second, Trump tends to let deadlines slip. And third, we all know Trump can flip-flop on his position repeatedly.
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‘Trump sides with the Ukrainian cause’
Maybe the most revealing aspect of all this came when a reporter asked Mr Trump: “How far are you willing to go if Putin sends more bombs in the coming days?”
“Don’t ask me questions like that…”
Mr Trump doesn’t really know what to do if Mr Putin continues to take him for a ride.
Mr Biden, before him, supplied Ukraine with the weapons to continue fighting.
If Mr Trump wants to end this, he may need to provide Ukraine with enough weapons to win.
But that would prolong, or even escalate, a war he wants to end now.
There’s the predicament.
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