🎙️ In this explosive episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi sits down with Errol Musk, father of Elon Musk, for a raw and revealing conversation 🧠🌍.
Errol discusses:
🌐 Why Elon Musk allowed Starlink for Ukraine’s military
📡 Hamas’ request to enable Starlink in Gaza
🇷🇺 His views on Vladimir Putin & the Ukraine war
Why NATO’s push for Ukrainian membership triggered conflict
🗳️ How Zelensky is acting as a tool of Washington
🗽 Elon Musk’s political journey from Democrat to Trump-supporting Republican
🏫 The creation of the Musk Institute of Science
💥 A rare insider take on war, politics, and power in 2025.
👇 LIKE | SUBSCRIBE | SHARE for independent voices and untold stories.
#ErrolMusk
#ElonMusk
#StarlinkGaza
#UkraineWar
#Zelensky
#Putin
#AfshinRattansi
#GoingUnderground
#Trump2024
#ProxyWar
#GazaCrisis
#NATOUkraine
#HamasStarlink
#PoliticalShift
#UkraineConflict
#MuskInstitute
#Geopolitics
#RussiaUkraine
#AlternativeMedia
#MiddleEastNews
Errol discusses:
🌐 Why Elon Musk allowed Starlink for Ukraine’s military
📡 Hamas’ request to enable Starlink in Gaza
🇷🇺 His views on Vladimir Putin & the Ukraine war
Why NATO’s push for Ukrainian membership triggered conflict
🗳️ How Zelensky is acting as a tool of Washington
🗽 Elon Musk’s political journey from Democrat to Trump-supporting Republican
🏫 The creation of the Musk Institute of Science
💥 A rare insider take on war, politics, and power in 2025.
👇 LIKE | SUBSCRIBE | SHARE for independent voices and untold stories.
#ErrolMusk
#ElonMusk
#StarlinkGaza
#UkraineWar
#Zelensky
#Putin
#AfshinRattansi
#GoingUnderground
#Trump2024
#ProxyWar
#GazaCrisis
#NATOUkraine
#HamasStarlink
#PoliticalShift
#UkraineConflict
#MuskInstitute
#Geopolitics
#RussiaUkraine
#AlternativeMedia
#MiddleEastNews
Category
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NewsTranscript
02:10Thank you for creating a son that has helped to remove censorship from the world with the X.
02:16You've said you were involved and not surprised that your son bought Twitter.
02:21Can you just explain how Elon discovered that Twitter was being used by the Biden administration as a political arm of the Democrats to sabotage democracy?
02:32And how well you think your son has managed to uncensor what has been a censorship platform, basically, before he took it over?
02:41Well, yes.
02:43I mean, it definitely, to answer your last question first, definitely X is the really quintessential platform for debate.
02:53It is not unduly censored, you know, and it is definitely probably the freest platform we've ever had on earth.
03:06And so, yes.
03:08And how he came about doing that, you asked me the question.
03:13Elon was always, from the moment he arrived in the United States back in the 1990s, he always took sides with the Democrats because they seemed to be the opposite of where he had come from.
03:27And they seemed to be fighting for the underdog and all that sort of thing.
03:31And as time went by, I mean, he became, you know, absolutely solidly, you know, behind the various presidents on the Democratic side, Obama and so on.
03:45He didn't realize they weren't fighting for the underdog at all, obviously, actually.
03:49He realized that afterwards, you know, which I think a lot of people are realizing now.
03:56And how it came about, to answer the question, towards the end of 21, Biden invited all the electric car makers to the White House, all being, except Tesla, to discuss turning the United States into an electric car company, country, by the year 2035.
04:17And they didn't invite Tesla, which was, you know, it was actually mind boggling.
04:23Nobody could understand it, at least all Elon.
04:25And up to that point, you know, he had been, he's still quite youthful, even as he's, you know, he's in his early 50s.
04:32But he's very much a sort of permanent youth, you know, and he couldn't understand this.
04:38He'd always been, you know, the darling of everybody.
04:40And everybody was, seemed to be solidly behind him and not being invited to the White House.
04:48And at the White House as well, you know, Biden introduced the head of GM, a woman, as the leader in electric car manufacturing in the United States.
04:59At that time, the other five manufacturers had made 26 electric cars.
05:04And apart from giving them away, they had not sold any.
05:08And it was somewhat mind boggling.
05:11And, you know, so much so that, you know, it was, you know, just stifled one's speech.
05:18You know what to say.
05:19He was just annoyed, like, like the oligarchy is.
05:22It wasn't that he realized all the terrible things they were doing.
05:26No, no, he wasn't.
05:28He wasn't just annoyed.
05:29He was completely befuddled, completely befuddled.
05:32It didn't make any sense to him.
05:35And, you know, as I said, you know, a little while ago, he's not, well, I didn't quite say that.
05:39He's not, he's not a sort of politically astute person to wonder, is this a political thing or what?
05:44As far as he was concerned, you know, he put his back into this thing and they had built a million cars that year and sold them all.
05:52He had about 450,000 cars on order.
05:54And he was told that he's not fit to come to the White House.
05:59And he started making statements at that time.
06:03For the first time, you know, he started saying, you know, the American president is, you know, loony.
06:10He's loony, you know, Canadian sort of expression, meaning, you know, he's something wrong here.
06:16What's going on?
06:17And I saw this and I quickly got a hold of him.
06:20I said, you realize you're making political statements for the first time in your life.
06:24You've never made political statements.
06:26And now you're calling the president of the United States a lunatic and everybody's picking up on it.
06:31And he carried on.
06:33I said, you better watch your bodyguards, you know, check your bodyguards.
06:36They don't like this kind of thing.
06:38I think I was a little bit more up on the matter than he was.
06:41And he couldn't understand it.
06:44And the month that followed, he was, there was an avalanche of tweets on Twitter, you know, saying he must get out of the country.
06:54He's a drain on the country.
06:56He's a drain on the, he does, he takes U.S. money and wastes it and taxpayers money on him.
07:02And this really puzzled him.
07:04And it came out in, you know, not in thousands, but in hundreds of thousands of tweets.
07:09He had no idea.
07:11And, of course, most people had no idea that this was being done with robots or bots, as they call it.
07:18And so, you know, he obviously, we all made inquiries.
07:23He made inquiries.
07:25And then he was, you know, informed that, in fact, the Twitter is run by an arm of the FBI, which we now think of as a crooked FBI,
07:35and by Biden's administration, and that he's not a, you know, a welcome person among them.
07:43And he just couldn't understand that.
07:45And I don't think anybody could understand.
07:48It was so extraordinarily stupid.
07:49And then he was told that Twitter is a, not being a person who's big on, you know, public platforms and stuff at that time,
07:59at any rate, he was told that Twitter is a private company.
08:03And he said, well, in that case, I'll buy it.
08:06And we calculated Twitter to be worth, with its data center, about $7 billion, which is an enormous amount of money.
08:13But he, you know, had a huge data center and so on.
08:16And then he said he's going to buy it.
08:17And as you know, they pushed the price up and up and up until eventually he was forced to pay, you know,
08:22they thought he'd never do it, but he paid $44 billion for it, the largest transaction of its kind in history, you know.
08:29And the rest is history, in fact, so...
08:34It was that weaponization of Twitter against the Tesla car company that he founded.
08:39Yes.
08:40That angered him.
08:42But, yes, and before Twitter was not allowed to, it seemed, have tweets about the conflict in Ukraine,
08:51the proxy war on Russia.
08:53And your son has since become more political.
08:56What do you make...
08:58I mean, it's odd because your son does, has, I understand, helped Zelensky with his Starlink system.
09:04But at the same time, he clearly has understood the origins of the conflict.
09:12I mean, what's your understanding of Zelensky, let alone your son's?
09:16Because, I mean, your son did at least say that there was a cyber attack in the past few weeks with Ukraine IP addresses.
09:22Immediately, of course, your son was attacked.
09:24He was just reporting a fact, I presume.
09:28What's your understanding of this man, Zelensky, who the United States has been backing to the tune of maybe hundreds of billions of dollars,
09:37at least $70 billion, according to congressional record?
09:40Well, you know, my understanding is the way I see it, and I've been around a long time.
09:46I would say that Zelensky is a front man and, you know, famous as a comedian, a mediocre comedian, I understand.
09:54And I have seen him, he's claimed to fame as playing the piano with his p******s or something.
09:58But be that as it may, he's been a useful tool for, you know, actors on the other side of the Atlantic.
10:07And I think we have to realize that there's more tools than somebody meets the eye.
10:13As far as Zelensky is concerned, he's clearly a very willing pawn.
10:19We know, as far as we know, nearly all the opposition parties in Ukraine have been imprisoned or confined.
10:28And so there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that there's much more going on here than meets the eye.
10:36You know, it was made fairly clear a little while ago that Zelensky probably has about 4% support in the Ukraine.
10:48Nothing like a popular leader.
10:51So, to all intents and purposes, the Ukraine is a dictatorship.
10:57And, you know, we don't see visuals and videos of what's really going on at the front.
11:03It's just really a sort of hidden issue.
11:06We don't see much of that.
11:07And we have to make up our minds of what's going on there.
11:12It's very scant information, really.
11:14And as you point out, with the hundreds of billions of dollars, Elon said recently that there's about $200 billion unaccounted for.
11:24Also, Elon said quite recently, about two months ago, and even being who he is, the kind of person he is,
11:32somewhat robotic himself, if I could put it like that, he said the Ukraine is the biggest graft system in human history.
11:40And if that came from anyone else, I would say, well, you know, it's a political statement or something.
11:47But from Elon, it's a factual statement.
11:51But doesn't it, I mean, he said, yeah, he said Zelensky is essentially running a massive graft machine,
11:57feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.
12:00These Ukrainians, of course, are Nazis.
12:02Are you not worried about your son and the kind of what's going to happen to him for, well, saying the truth,
12:10a lot of people in the global south and the rest of the world believe, except in Western Europe?
12:16What do you think about his safety?
12:20Well, you know, I've been concerned, we've been concerned as a family about his safety for a long time.
12:24So it's not new.
12:26And it goes back way, in fact, before, you know, 2022, you know, we were always worried about some loony taking a shot at him
12:35or some, you know, lunatic taking a shot at him or something like that.
12:38But I personally have been there with him.
12:41And he has an extraordinary bodyguard force, you know.
12:45Better than Trump's secret service who survived two assassination attempts, of course.
12:50It may not be known, but, well, I can tell you, I mean, after Butler in October or September last year,
12:59the secret service was dispensed with.
13:03And Elon's 200-strong bodyguard force took over the security for Trump as well.
13:10So Trump and Elon were protected by the same private force.
13:15And I believe, Chris, on the 20th of January this year, it may have changed a little bit.
13:23But the bodyguards were provided by Elon for Trump and for himself.
13:28I mean, it's also interesting that anyone who expresses any opinion on Ukraine, of course,
13:34is immediately accused of echoing Kremlin talking points.
13:38I mean, presumably you can establish that your son is not a Russian agent.
13:43But the deep state economist, which has supported wars and dictators all around the world,
13:47immediately said, oh, Elon Musk is echoing Kremlin talking points.
13:52No.
13:53What do you think about the latest, those smears?
13:57No, no.
13:58I mean, Elon is not a, you know, you know, Elon is not a, it really isn't a politician.
14:03You know, he's a pragmatist, tech, technical person, you know, and, you know, quite uncomfortable
14:11when put in the position where, as you've probably seen, you know, where he has to say anything,
14:16you know, when it comes to doge and so forth.
14:20And, you know, he put himself in a spot when he very, very self-consciously went on stage
14:26to thank everyone for the election results and, you know, raise his arm in a sort of,
14:31you know, punch, punch or air pump or whatever you call it.
14:35And he was accused of a Nazi salute.
14:38I mean, all he wanted to do, you know, I know I was saying very well,
14:42all he wanted to do was get off that stage.
14:44And, you know, it's something that people in the media who are polished and like yourself,
14:51and that really probably can't understand, you have to go back to when you were perhaps
14:55at school and how difficult it was to talk in front of people, you know.
15:00Errol Musk, I'll stop you there.
15:02More from the father of Elon Musk and the former South African politician after this break.
15:06Welcome back to Going Underground.
15:21I'm still here with the father of Elon Musk and former South African politician Errol Musk.
15:26Errol, we were talking about your son's ability to be a politician, as it were.
15:32I know that you, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth, arguably quite a few people admire Vladimir Putin to a certain extent.
15:44But then I suppose I've got to ask you, why does your son allow the Starlink system to be used by Zelensky's troops to target Putin's troops?
15:53Well, you know, that's not 100% accurate.
15:57I mean, Putin obviously commands a certain amount of respect.
16:00A man has been in power for a long time.
16:03If you listen to him talk, he is not bad.
16:06He puts out very sensible information when he talks.
16:12Obviously, he's there for Russia.
16:14He's there for a country that has meant a great deal to the world for hundreds of years.
16:18It's been the butt of the world, you know, ridicule and whatever from the rest of the world for many years as well.
16:25You know, everybody seems to be on their high heels as soon as Russia achieves anything.
16:30And yet, most of our, many, many of our greatest authors and greatest painters and greatest scientists have come from Russia.
16:37So, it's really, something's wrong here.
16:40And, at the same time, you know, one has to, you know, obviously look at what Putin is, I imagine, what the Russians are doing.
16:50I personally think that at the breakup, with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the patching together of little countries, things were not properly done.
17:03And it's quite apparent that, to anyone who reads about it, that certain parts of the Ukraine are free, you know, well, Ukraine is Russian-speaking, but people are actually ethnic Russians in that part of Ukraine that Putin is concerned about.
17:20And so, there's obviously a lot more to this than what, you know, is simply spewed out by, you know, the media in general.
17:31I mean, there's obviously a great deal more to this.
17:35And a settlement has to be made that satisfies Putin and Russia.
17:42Obviously, it's one of the major countries in the world.
17:45They cannot simply be ignored and pushed aside and told this is how it's going to be.
17:49How do you explain why the media are continually lying about the conflict?
17:57I mean, I should say that the anniversary of the Russian defeat of the Nazis is in a few days' time, and Western European leaders are not even recognising Russia's contribution to the war effort, when, of course, 27 million perished in that fight against the Nazis.
18:14Yes. Well, you know, I don't think you could really say that about, maybe you can talk about the European Union, politicians not saying anything.
18:22I think the people of Europe are aware.
18:24You know, Russia has always been, if you go back in history, a country that has, you know, stirred controversy and conflict, trying to be noticed among the European nations, trying to be part of the European community in some ways, in many ways.
18:42And, you know, the rest of Europe trying to, more or less, put this Russia, you know, as not being important.
18:51No, Russia is very important.
18:52And so, the situation that we've got today is a sort of outcome of all those things that have been years.
18:59And you can't simply, there's not one argument, there's always two sides to an argument.
19:04And before you can resolve the situation that exists now, one has to look at both sides of the argument.
19:11Ukraine was made up of some 11 to 15 kingdoms over the many years in the past.
19:18It's also a strange sort of setup.
19:21The other thing that one has to recall is that when Russia first went into the Ukraine, on the border, they dismantled 27 biolabs that were on their border.
19:32And it also followed on the West or politicians in America and Europe wanting or seeming to suggest that Ukraine should harbor, you know, strategic weapons and be part of NATO against Russia.
19:50Well, this is the same as doing that in Cuba, you know, or rather putting Russian arms and strategic weapons in Cuba.
20:02It's just not acceptable.
20:04You don't have to be a genius to realize that, that there's two sides to this argument.
20:09Yeah, no publicity about the biowarfare labs, of course, in Western European NATO member media.
20:15But you didn't answer why your son allows Starlink to be used by Ukrainian troops.
20:20Or is that because of a contractual thing?
20:22It's not Elon Musk saying to Zelensky, yeah, use this for the navigation systems for drones to attack Russian troops.
20:29Yes, no, Elon's approach, he's a businessman, he has a system, it's meant to help people, it's not meant to be used by one side against the other.
20:44And if you are going to be given, if you're going to be judged properly, you would naturally offer this to both sides.
20:54Now, he did cancel Starlink when there was talk of Ukraine attacking Sebastopol.
21:00He canceled Starlink for the Ukraine.
21:03And he provided Starlink for the Ukraine at the very beginning of the conflict because it was the common sense thing to do.
21:12But your understanding is it's being used now, again, and he has the ability to switch it off.
21:17So why doesn't he switch it off?
21:20Well, the minute he switches it off, he'd be, you know, taking sides.
21:24And that's not what his job is.
21:27If we can just jump a bit to Israel, you know, shortly after the horrible events of October 7th, in a month or two after that,
21:40the Hamas actually contacted me, the leaders of Hamas contacted me to ask me if I could persuade Elon to give Hamas a stalling.
21:48And I did.
21:50I went, I said, look, there are two sides to this argument, you know, and Elon agreed.
21:56And he gave them stalling on the basis that it's used for human rights.
22:02Yes, I am sure about that.
22:04He gave them stalling because the idea was, the suggestion was, from stalling's point of view, that it should be there for humanitarian purposes.
22:13Because, you know, so...
22:15Because most people think Elon Musk is completely partisan, and I know you've said Netanyahu is a family friend.
22:25Yes, but that doesn't mean that, you know, that doesn't mean that you do it with all fairness.
22:33In our family, and speaking for myself and my son, we see that in every situation there are two sides to every argument.
22:42And to hobnail one side, if you're in a position to do that, against the other, that's not how we would like to see things being done.
22:52We'd rather people, of course, solve their problems and work things out.
22:59But as far as using what you've got for one side and not the other, well, you're just looking for trouble.
23:08And later on, you'll be accused, much like taking sides in a divorce between a man and a woman.
23:13You know, it's best to, you know, show the best that you can for both parties and not choose one.
23:22Because one way or the other, later on, you're going to be in trouble if you do that.
23:26You know, it's quite simple, really.
23:27So while he aids the people of Gaza, run, of course, by Hamas, we only know the scale of destruction in Gaza because of X.
23:38But is it your view that if it's not Donald Trump as president, it could easily turn the other way very quickly and censorship could be back to square one?
23:49It's only because of Donald Trump, basically, that the censorship is stopped on X.
23:54A future Democrat administration could again start using censorship.
24:01Yes, that's possible.
24:02But I've just, no, that's possible.
24:03Anything's possible.
24:04But at the same time, I've just returned from the United States.
24:07I've just spent three weeks across the United States.
24:10And I can tell you that across the United States, I visited eight states and I even spoke at Stanford to a group of people.
24:19You know, I can tell you that even the Democrats are quite happy, seem quite happy with what Elon is doing.
24:26And they're happy generally across the United States with what Trump is doing.
24:30I heard very little opposition to Trump.
24:33In fact, if I were to gauge the situation, and here again I'm making an estimate, but I'd say 80% of the people, I never met the other 20%, but I presume that they're there.
24:46But I'd say 80% of the Americans are behind Trump, quite happily behind Trump.
24:49And Trump is very intent on, you know, I was there with him, very intent on ending the Ukraine conflict.
25:00So, yeah, I mean, but you wouldn't get that from the so-called mainstream media in the United States, which is clearly partisan.
25:07And attacks, at least he's been attacking your son for personally benefiting from the Department of Government efficiency, which I'm sure you would be the first to deny, given that he's probably given quite a lot for this zero-paying job.
25:22Well, once you have an untold amount of money or assets, you know, you can't really benefit somebody.
25:32You know, I've had people say to me things like that.
25:37We're a family who has everything, so it's not like you can buy us or, you know, offer us a little bit of money or something like that.
25:44We don't think like that.
25:45We think in terms of what can we do, what can we make, how can we make things better?
25:49You know, what can we do to improve the situation?
25:53But just finally, I know we're running out of time here.
25:56You've been in Dubai.
25:57We just missed you while you were here.
25:59I've got a piece here from a Dubai paper going, one billion dirham Trump Tower Dubai project is live.
26:06They must have made a mistake.
26:07They should have said Musk Tower.
26:08No, there's a Trump one and a Musk one.
26:11Just very briefly, what is the Musk Institute?
26:14And how concerned are you that the neocons are going to try and get hold of Trump as he finishes up his presidency, as he continues with the presidency?
26:27No, this presidency, as I see it, will continue.
26:30But, yes, I was quite a while in Dubai in December.
26:35I was with various sheikhs, and I was able to meet various emirate sheikhs and so on.
26:40And one of them, I was a young, very sharp sheikh, and we finished the talk, and I was with all of his people in a large palace.
26:48And at the end of the talk, he said to me, what's next?
26:51What's next for the Musk family?
26:52I thought, well, I haven't really done enough, but anyway, my head suddenly popped in the idea, and something that's always been part of my thinking, is that we have to overcome space-time travel.
27:06We have to learn how gravity works.
27:08Otherwise, the popular vision that we have of the future, where vehicles can go up in the air and simply float up to the International Space Station and so forth, is not going to happen.
27:18We'll still be stuck on the ground 100 years from now.
27:20So we have to start studying this particular problem that was very intensely studied in the beginning of the 20th century by greatmothers like Minkowski and so on.
27:30And we have to start a new study of that.
27:33And I thought that was the end of it.
27:35But within days, I was contacted by, you know, a number of news outlets in Dubai who wanted to know more.
27:44And so within days or within a week, within a couple of weeks, it had become the Musk Institute of Science.
27:52And it had become, it was only three weeks or maybe three and a half weeks later that Elon contacted me and said, what is this Musk Institute?
27:59And I said, he said, am I involved?
28:02And I said, no, it's me.
28:04And he said, oh, okay, fine.
28:06It sounds good.
28:06And so, you know, it just continued.
28:10And the idea spread to financiers in London.
28:14And they came up with the idea that if we put up a tower in Dubai, you know, the thing is to put up a tower in Dubai these days.
28:22And if we're called the Musk Tower, then it could, in fact, the rentals and so on could actually help to, you know, great minds, greater than mine, work this out.
28:30Things move fast here in the GCC on some issues.
28:36You'll have to visit us here in Dubai.
28:38Errol Musk, thank you.
28:40That'd be great.
28:41And that's it for the show.
28:42Our condolences to those suffering the EU-US-UK armed genocide and famine continuing in Gaza.
28:49We'll be back on Saturday with a brand new episode.
28:51Until then, keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored in your country.
28:55And head to our channel, Going Underground TV on Rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground.
28:59See you Saturday.