While talking to Carlson, Musk did little to conceal his disdain for birth control, making it fairly clear that he doesn’t care whether or not the human beings he speaks of like barn animals actually want to procreate in a world in which he owns the town square. Unsurprisingly, within days of enacting a near-total abortion ban in September 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed Musk “consistently tells me he likes the social policies” in his state.

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On top of all of that, there’s the bleak, existential comedy of a billionaire blaming civilization’s collapse on the poors (as he understands us) not having enough babies that many of us simply can’t afford—or just don’t want, which is also valid—while he hoards $200 billion. Tesla has faced lawsuits for firing workers who used maternity leave or became pregnant, and while under Musk’s new leadership, Twitter allegedly laid off employees mid-IVF cycle last year and hacked away at the company’s once-generous IVF coverage. (Musk, himself, had five kids using IVF.) The billionaire further spent the better part of the fall of 2021 publicly lobbying against Democrats’ Build Back Better plan, which offered historic investments to fund child care and family leave.

Once again, all of this—Musk’s open obsession with bodies and reproduction, his characteristically hypocritical refusal to empower workers to build families—is stunning but not surprising. For Musk to be aware of everything that it takes to parent would actually require him to have firsthand experience parenting—which, as his ex-partners have attested to, he does not. It certainly speaks volumes that one of his own children, his trans daughter, has entirely cut him off. Hmm, I wonder why!

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In any case, if Musk’s pleas successfully moved you to consider procreation, might I recommend pursuing this with anyone but him? Something tells me a man who once shamed his ex-wife for openly mourning the loss of their infant—then tried to lie and claim he was the one who held the baby in its final moments—may not be the most suitable father to anyone’s children.