While Elon Musk may be the star of the political drama unfolding in Washington of late, his personal life has come to resemble a soap opera.
On Thursday afternoon, the Canadian musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, replied to Musk on his social platform, X, in evident desperation. “Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis,” she wrote in a response to Musk bragging about the supposed capabilities of the latest version of Grok, his “anti-woke” chatbot. “I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention,” wrote Grimes. “If you don’t want to talk to me can you please designate or hire someone who can so that we can move forward on solving this. This is urgent, Elon.”
Grimes did not specify which of their three children was experiencing health problems. The eldest, 4-year-old X Æ A-Xii (or X for short), is often seen with Musk at public events and at the White House. Musk and Boucher waged a two-year custody battle over the kids that came to an end last August, though it’s not clear what the terms of their ultimate agreement were.
Musk did not immediately reply to Grimes’ plea. It seems the billionaire was busy waving a chainsaw around on stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. with Argentine president Javier Milei, whose severe cuts to government institutions were an inspiration to Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as it began gutting federal agencies last month. But it appeared that moderation decisions were made behind the scenes at X to reduce the visibility of Grimes’ post, with users noticing that it was listed as “unavailable” in the thread under Musk’s post. The same error message showed up when some users tried to quote the post. Reacting to screenshots showing how her remark had been censored on the site, Grimes replied, “lol,” though that response was soon removed.
In a followup post, Grimes defended her decision to address Musk online. “I’m not giving any details but he won’t respond to texts call or emails and has skipped every meeting and our child will suffer life long impairment if he doesn’t respond asap, so I need him to fucking respond,” she wrote, “and if I have to apply public pressure then I guess that’s where we’re at.” Eventually, she deleted all the posts regarding her fruitless attempts to contact Musk.
The callout came just days after far-right influencer Ashley St. Clair claimed that she had recently given birth to another of Musk’s children, which would make her the fourth known woman to have at least one child by him. The baby would be the 13th known living child of Musk’s. (His first son with ex-wife Justine Wilson died of SIDS at 10 weeks old in 2002.) Musk, who regularly advocates for increased procreation because of an unfounded belief that humanity is facing population collapse, has not confirmed whether he is the father of a child with St. Clair, though the two have a long history of flirtatious exchanges on X.
St. Clair announced on X on Valentine’s Day that she had given birth to a child by Musk five months earlier and had not wanted to disclose it but feared that it would soon be tabloid news regardless. “I ask that the media honor our child’s privacy, and refrain from invasive reporting,” she wrote in her statement. As this news went viral, St. Clair also accused Musk of ignoring her messages about their alleged child together. After Musk replied “Whoa” to a post from far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos, who claimed that St. Clair had “plotted” for years to “ensnare” the billionaire, St. Clair replied to Musk: “Elon, we have been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded.” In another post, she claimed that Musk had been asking to have more kids with her as recently as the week prior, adding, “I would like to take this offline for our child’s sake and have been attempting to [do] so for weeks.”
Both of those posts have since been deleted. “Ashley & Elon have been privately working towards the creation of an agreement about raising their child for some time,” wrote St. Clair’s PR representative Brian Glicklich, in another X statement. “We are waiting to Elon to publicly acknowledge his parental role with Ashley, and to end unwarranted speculation, and Ashley trusts that Elon intends to finish their agreement quickly, in the best interests of the wellbeing and security of the child they share.” Almost a week later, Musk has not confirmed that he has a child or had a relationship with St. Clair, and has instead kept busy hyping his Grok product, touting the supposed accomplishments of DOGE, and, at one point on Thursday, calling an astronaut “fully retarded” for challenging a lie he had posted about the reasons that two International Space Station crew members have been stuck in orbit for months without a ride back to Earth.
In a recent podcast interview, Musk’s own father, Errol Musk said that he “hasn’t been a good dad.” The two are estranged in part because Errol, in his 70s, has fathered two children with his former stepdaughter, more than 40 years his junior. Musk is also estranged from his daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who legally changed her name and gender in 2022, writing in a court petition that “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” Musk has admitted that her transition was a factor in his turn toward far-right politics. Following St. Clair’s birth announcement, Wilson posted on her social media channels, “If I had a nickel for every time that I found out I had a new half-sibling online, I’d have a few nickels — which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened SIX SEPARATE TIMES.”
Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, hasn’t mentioned her son’s latest familial frictions on social media, but on Thursday she did log into X to celebrate the confirmation of MAGA conspiracy theorist Kash Patel as director of the FBI, and posted about having fun with Grok.
Meanwhile, St. Clair liked a post of a screenshot of Grimes’ now deleted comment about putting pressure on Musk to pay attention to their child’s medical needs. The user who had shared the image, columnist Pedro L. Gonzalez, documented the engagement and declared: “Ashley St. Clair is on Team Grimes.” It’s unclear if the two women have communicated about their apparently shared predicament as co-parents with the world’s richest man.
From Rolling Stone US
