Elon Musk's Father Had A Financial Warning For His Son (But He Didn't Listen)

The relationship between tech billionaire Elon Musk and his father, engineering millionaire Errol Musk, has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride in acid rain. At least in the public eye, the relationship between the wealthy Musks has been fraught for some time — and that's putting it mildly.

The younger Musk has gone on record to call his father "a terrible human being," and critiqued him for lying about emerald-mine wealth and not being financially supportive in early years. Musk has even been estranged from his father for periods of time. For his part, the elder Musk frequently addresses his son via press interviews. Errol often praises Elon's dogged innovation, as well as criticizes plenty of his son's shortcomings. Errol has made public comment on everything from Elon's over-reliance on nannies to his lack of political acumen. 

In a late 2024 TV news interview, Errol warned Elon (and perhaps the world) not to let his Department of Government Efficiency role distract him from his big businesses, including Tesla and SpaceX. The younger Musk didn't heed this warning, and come 2025, Elon is lashing out over tanking Tesla stocks. However, taking past turbulence with the rest of the controversy surrounding Papa Musk (including allegations of domestic violence and the fact that he fathered children with his stepdaughter), it makes some sense why Elon Musk might not take Errol's paternal advice to heart — even if said advice might have ended up being pretty sound for Elon Musk's own financial future if he did.

In a 2024 interview with Tom Burges Watson for Al Arabiya English, Errol Musk said it was "good news" that his son had been appointed head of DOGE, even if Errol didn't "have time" to call his son and congratulate him personally. The elder Musk did have time to express how he was grateful that his son would be sharing the role with Vivek Ramaswamy, due to the fact that Elon's business bandwidth would be overtaxed by equally all-encompassing government work.

"Elon has a tremendous task on his hands," Errol told Burges, referring to Elon's businesses, saying of his son's commitments: "He has a couple hundred thousand employees and a lot of very serious things going on in his life, so he has to be available for all that he started... [he] can't just walk away from things." Errol highlighted that the demands of Elon's entrepreneurship and business empire requires his son to constantly make decisions all day — and to be pulled away from those pivotal decisions to do governmental "house cleaning" would not prove beneficial to those businesses.

"To have him sit in an office somewhere in Washington, waiting and twiddling his thumbs – no, no," Errol told Burges, insisting: "He has to be called upon on a sort of consultancy basis." But Musk is clearly more than a consultant for DOGE. Ramaswamy quit working for "DOGE" about as soon as he started, due to rumors of clashes with Musk, and to pursue running for office in Ohio. Musk has become DOGE's main driver, and he and his businesses the primary lightning rod for related backlash.

Rather than act as a consultant for DOGE, Elon Musk has acted as its main crusader. Initially, Musk's very visible status as Trump's de facto right hand gave him and his businesses a bump. However, that boost has gone increasingly bust as Trump's economic policies have grown more alarming to domestic and global stakeholders. Trump's proposed tariffs have led to expected retaliatory tariffs, and those tariffs impact the job market, as well as the stock market.

Tesla stocks have continued to drop since December, and four top members of Tesla's executive board have sold off a combined $100 million in the company's stock since February 2025. Musk got visibly emotional when he admitted in a March Fox News interview that he was having "great difficulty" managing his businesses along with his DOGE role. While it might be tempting to draw a line from the negative effect on Musk's businesses to Trump, there is also evidence that Musk's businesses are suffering from self-inflicted wounds.

Musk is an unelected billionaire with unprecedented influence over American life. Bipartisan public outcry over DOGE cuts and threats has been significant, and has even started inspiring Republican leaders to avoid in-person town hall meetings. Elon has made disturbing comments about the future of Social Security benefits, and been instrumental in DOGE cuts closing physical Social Security offices. On November 12, 2024, Musk posted to X (formerly Twitter) that cutting "dumb spending" he alleges is happening in the government will be "both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining." Much the same could be said about his own business woes — in addition to his father perhaps chiming in, "I told you so."