Errol Musk on his son Elon Musk’s recent comments
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The Hard Shoulder with Ciarán Cudahy. With the MG Hybrid and Electric range. On Newstalk. It gives me great pleasure to welcome to the show Errol Musk. Errol is the father of Elon Musk, of course. Errol, how are you? I'm good, thank you. And you? I'm not too bad, listen, thank you very much for asking. Given that your son is kind of ubiquitous all over the world in terms of news headlines and everything at the moment and hands on the levers of power in the United States, are you proud of him?

Well, you know, I'm very pleased with his progress. I mean, I was proud of him when he was born, you know, so, you know, you don't suddenly become proud of your child. How do you feel when you kind of you see him kind of shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump? And like I say, so close to the decision making that impacts so many people around the world?

Well, you know, it's great. I mean, you know, he's been doing it for a long time. I was doing it before him in this country, rather a little smaller. So we have been doing this for quite a long time. It's sort of a sudden shift of things. But, I mean, he's really broken the mold a bit, you know. Do you see any of yourself in Elon? Yes, yes. He's very similar to me. And people point that out to me all the time, you know, that we are quite similar, you know, in behavior and stuff.

They tell him I even look the same. You know, we look similar or something like that. How do you cope with some of the more negative commentary then around him? You know, himself, you know, he's one of those people who just balances off him, you know. Look, I mean, if somebody criticizes you and it's true...

Then obviously, then you might feel something. But if it's nonsense, you know, why would it bother you? You know, I mean, take the sports guys, you know, they go into the field and they get ripped this way and that. But if it's not true, they just let it bounce. You know what? They'll just let it bounce. But that's that's easy kind of maybe for him to do or for individuals. But as a parent, it must be difficult. I imagine it would be.

to see some of the kind of vitriol directed at him. Occasionally I'll see stuff that makes me want to get on a plane and find these people, you know, teach them a lesson. I rest on, you know. What do you make of his intervention in the politics of other countries? I'll say Germany, you know, where he's talking about the AFD alternative for Deutschland being the only kind of solution to the problems they have, or is his pretty serious kind of intervention in terms of UK politics in recent times?

Well, you know, Elon's investment in these countries like Germany, for example, makes him a reason why would he not intervene on the basis of the extent of his investment in these countries. So that for a

alone is a reason. However, these countries have taken and had no problem interfering in other people's politics in other countries themselves. So I think it's a kind of sort of free-for-all at the moment. I mean, at the moment he's a private citizen, but shortly he will be, of course, hopefully, maybe, hopefully he'll be

a cabinet minister, in which case he has to okay the things with the rest of the cabinet. But for the meantime, I mean, he's a free person. Many people, thousands of people are tweeting and exing the same stuff, you know, that he's tweeted, just that he's kind of well-known, you know, that's all. It's more than that, though. I mean, not to kind of quote Spider-Man or whoever said it in a Spider-Man movie about power and responsibility, but, you know, he has a degree of power because of

you know, the platforms he owns and the reach he has. And when he tweets or retweets certain things, it's different from another private citizen, surely. Well, yes, you know, I suppose the same could be said about, you know, people like Soros and, you know, there are people who have more sway in the things that they say. And, you know, it's not always...

perhaps wise, but I don't know. I mean, he's a citizen of the world. Today we have a world which is tied together by social media. So it's not as though you're stuck in your little provincial spot anymore. You can actually make comments about what you see elsewhere. As far as Europe is concerned, I mean, he does have a massive investment in Germany. So therefore,

He has a reason to say something. The other thing is the UK, we are English-speaking people. We all trace our roots back to the UK. Half my family, half his family lives in the UK. I mean, we're not, we look like, we may have passports that aren't

British. But that's only just because of circumstance. We are equally able to obtain British passports if we want it. Passports are just for travel. Right now, he's one of the people...

from the English world that has moved out into the world. And when we out in the world, you know, had trouble in the past in our different places, you know, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, you know, wherever, and we had any problem, we always had to turn to England to come and help us. Now it's perhaps our turn to look at England and see whether we can help back, you know, when they have terrible, terrible problems that they've got at the moment in England. Yeah.

But, I mean, how is he or anybody else helping England by talking about kind of, you know, Tommy Robinson deserving freedom for speaking his mind, which is kind of patent nonsense? Well, yes, you know, that was my point. I was the one who raised that. Tommy Robinson is a political prisoner. There's no doubt of that under any definition that you need to make it. He's a political prisoner. How? So, yes, yes, he's a political prisoner. No, how? And so...

Well, he's pointing out what's going wrong in the UK. The UK, like Ireland, I think is doing the same. Germany and South Africa. No, but sorry, but that's not why he's in prison. Let's be clear about that. He's in prison for contempt. A court hearing and sentencing to 18 months in solitary confinement. That's called insane. OK, that's madness. That's what you do in the gulags of Soviet Russia.

No, this is England. So no, no, I must put you right there. And so he is a political prisoner. No, he's not. I'm sorry. You can say it as many times as you want. It doesn't mean it's true. He's in prison for contempt of court. It's an 18 month sentence. Because nonsense. That is not nonsense. You saying nonsense doesn't make it true. He is. It is a statement of fact to say he is in prison for contempt of court. That is nonsense.

They use that as an excuse. You know, for God's sake, man. They use it as an excuse. That's rubbish. So, sorry, let me put it this way. OK, he was handed... The High Court ruled in 2021 that he had defamed an individual, ordered him to pay, I think it was about 125,000 euro, about 100,000 pounds sterling in damages. He was handed an injunction which prevented him from repeating the claims, the libelous claims.

If he had not repeated those libelous claims, he would not be in prison. He repeated them and he was in contempt of court. He was in breach of that injunction.

Yes, he's what you call a man with some strength. So he's not Nigel Farage, the man who talks between a cigarette, between two cigarettes. No, no. But the High Court of the United Kingdom, an independent court, found those claims libelous, the things he was saying. And they said, listen, we've deemed these to be libelous. You've got to pay damages. And what's more, because they're libelous, you can't keep saying them.

And he went out and he said them again. And therefore he's in contempt of court. The same rules would apply to me or you. Yes. Well, you know, if you see what the British courts have been doing by sentencing people, old men who complained in front of police lines and they sent them to 18 or 24 months in prison,

for inciting a riot, then you know that the British courts are compromised. They are no longer the British courts. They are something else now. They are ruled by Davos. Do you understand? Your country, England, Germany, your so-called leaders are taking the instructions

from Davos. You don't really believe that, do you? Do you think judges in this country take instructions from Davos?

I would say they take instructions from your political leaders and they are told you either do this or we'll make things difficult for you. How do they communicate those messages? How does a political leader communicate to a judge of the Supreme Court or the High Court in Ireland what they should do? Is it email, phone, what not? They pick up the phone. They phone them? They pick up the phone. They pick up the phone. Okay.

Have you any evidence for that? I mean, have you heard these phone calls? Has anybody? It's a remarkable thing. It's a remarkable revelation is what I'm saying, kind of, to make from South Africa that politicians in this country are picking up the phone and ringing judges at the Supreme Court and telling them what to do. Well, you know, you can see from the results. So you can also see from many of your listeners who tell you that I am 100% right. That's evidence of nothing, Errol. I mean, that anecdote is evidence.

No, no, that's the feeling that the people get from their gut, from their brain that God gave them. See, there's a responsibility, though. I mean, it's easy for people to kind of walk down the street and say that and think this is what's happening. People who are policymakers, who I describe Elon as being close to the levers of power, have a responsibility to

to do more than that and just kind of to react the way their gut tells them. They've got to react based on evidence. And there's no evidence he does that. So yesterday, for example, to go back to kind of Ireland and the Irish judicial system, he retweeted a claim that Irish citizens get longer prison sentences than illegal immigrants is how he described it. That's messed up. That's what Elon said. And what's messed up is that it's 100% inaccurate.

Well, Elon said it, it's probably correct. No, it's not. It's wrong. It's actually, I'm going to tell you why it's wrong. The person he was retweeting, who's a well-known far-right agitator, and

cited a single case from 20 years ago when a large study was carried out only two years ago that said there's no difference, no statistical difference in terms of sentencing between Irish citizens and foreign-born nationals, except when it comes to sexual offences. And when it comes to sexual offences, foreign-born nationals get much tougher prison sentences than Irish citizens. So actually, not only was he wrong, it was the opposite of the truth.

Well, you know, that's conceivable, I suppose. What I would say to you, you know, as an Irishman, I must tell you some of my best, best, best friends I've ever had have been Dubliners. And so I just want to say to you, you know, remember what a scoundrel Michael Collins was. They should have done him in right in the beginning, don't you think? In what sense? You're going to have to expand on that. Well, OK, you remember Michael Collins? Yes.

The Brits should have killed him right in the beginning, I think. Don't you think so? The scoundrel, Brett. The lies he told. Remember all the lies he told? Oh, I see. I see what you're getting at. That essentially the things he might have said about the British or the British Empire pale in significance to kind of his, the Ireland that he helped to shape. Yeah.

That's right. So Elon Musk can say awful things about people with dark skin in this country and it doesn't matter if the ends justify the means. No, no. I would say that the Irish and certainly the UK

have been incredibly kind in bringing people from third world countries and giving them a break in England. I mean, that's really nice. I think it's terrific. However, when you start overdoing it and you start giving those people more, you know, sort of

you know, consideration in the actual British citizens. That's not a good idea. And there's a lot of evidence of that. And the people complain because they say this is not working out. My little village isn't the same anymore. You know, we now have a bigger mosque than we have a church. Now, it's reasonable to complain about something like that because we don't go to Muslim countries and start building up churches in their main road and all that sort of stuff. We don't get involved with them.

So we don't do that, and it's reasonable to complain. You feel your quality of life is changing. And I see little kids saying I'm being forced to learn about Islam at school. I don't like British kids, I mean, it's weird. And what's the plan? And then of course, none of the British population appears to me seems to approve of this. So this government has just taken on itself to do all these things.

And, I mean, never mind all that. If you look at this gang rape gang, gang rape gangs that they've had, I mean, if anything calls for an incredibly deep, serious inquiry, it's this. And yet they voted en masse against this.

have an inquiry into it. I read some of the Trump... A national inquiry. Sorry, a national inquiry. They voted against a national inquiry. Keir Starmer and his government are absolutely supportive of inquiries. What they want are locally run inquiries. So you don't have one massive national UK inquiry. Instead, you've got inquiries independent of each other happening all over the country. So it would just be clear on this. They're not opposed to inquiries. They're opposed to a single inquiry. No, no, no, no. A national inquiry is required.

Not some Mickey Mouse inquiry. According to you, but just to be clear, they're not opposed to inquiries. They're opposed to a very specific suggestion of a type of inquiry. They're supportive of a different type of inquiry. No, I don't buy that. And no, no. What you need here is every possible inquiry. Why don't you buy that?

Well, first of all, it's going to bring this government down. The Labour government will collapse. No, no, no, that's a separate answer. That's not the question. Why don't you buy that? Because that's a way of not having an inquiry. But they have had inquiries. They've had inquiries. There have been inquiries. Local inquiries have already happened with regards to these so-called grooming gangs. Yes, but the people that...

Many of the people that... I'm not alone. Millions of people are saying they can't believe what they're reading. My son sent me... I can't believe it because most of it's not true, Aaron. Let me tell you. I can't believe it, but at least I know not to believe it. People can't believe it because it's untrue, most of it. Yes, but the court transcripts of evidence...

are so unbelievable that I would not be able to share them with another man, never mind with a woman. I wouldn't be able to let a woman sit next to me while she reads those transcripts. I would be too embarrassed. No, you're right. And I've read some of them. They're appalling. They are absolutely appalling. Nobody will disagree with you on that front. They just, they would...

sick to the pity of your stomach is how you'd feel reading them. But again, I'm not sure, you know, we're kind of talking in circles here a little bit because because of what has happened and because of the horrific nature of these crimes, that's why the UK government are supportive of inquiries. But it's just not the national inquiry that the Tory party asked them to vote on yesterday. LAUGHTER

Sorry, I got a laugh. I think that's really funny. No, no, no. You need every conceivable inquiry, every possible inquiry. You need people to come from so that there's no conceivable possibility of bias. Of course, the information that's coming out now is that many people in high positions are

We're party to these gang rape providing of underage children. So, you know, this is a time bomb to go off there. This is something so incredible that it's going to change UK politics forever. This Keir Starmer government will be gone by the end of February.

if this stuff is able to be brought forward. Do you think the government will collapse because if it's brought forward, Keir Starmer himself will be implicated in this? Yes, he is implicated in it because he was the director of public prosecutions who shelved these investigations at the time.

Did he shove them? He introduced a special prosecutor for exactly these types of cases. He changed the CPS guidance to encourage police to investigate these types of crimes. And he brought in court reforms that make the process less traumatic for victims. He also brought the very first prosecution of a so-called grooming gang.

Yes, I know that they were forced to bring some of the people to court. But there's more. There's so much more because the numbers involved are huge. You know, in one particular small town, they have 1,400 girls that were treated like this. So just in one small town. And so they have one or two cases here and there. That's not enough. No, no, no. This was a concerted effort to do something really gross to Western society.

It's even conceivable to imagine that it was planned. It wasn't just done, it was planned. It's so inconceivable. But the allegation that Keir Starmer is implicated in this by some way of cover-up, I mean, is that like, what are you basing that on beyond your son's retweets? My brain. So nothing. My brain. But no actual evidence. No, my brain tells me. So my brain's quite good.

I'm sure it is, but I mean, you have no evidence. No, no, no. The brain tells you, you know, you always know your brain tells you, you know, so you, you, you're not, uh, that's why you've got a brain, you know?

I mean, actually, you know. A brain confers in you kind of the power of cognition. It doesn't confer on you the power of concocting evidence. I'm asking where the evidence is. I'm asking where your brain is or what it does. But my brain is able to put two and two together, you see. So that's the thing, you see. That's the difference.

But at any rate, I don't want to be nasty. That sounds bad. No, no. I think we all know what's going on. You know, I know. And we all hope somehow maybe it's not as bad as it really is. I don't know. All I know is that at the present time, England's...

having a hard time. There are 3,000 people in prison there that have been put into cells that have been vacated by real criminals who've been put back on the streets. I mean, this is crazy. And Tommy Robinson

All he's ever done is try to point out what's going on. He's sitting in a solitary confinement. You know, I mean, I said to people the other day... It's not the only thing he's ever done. I mean, he's got a very violent criminal record. But it's rubbish. It's rubbish. That's a statement of fact again. I've committed, what do you call it? Violent crimes, I said.

I've come out of contempt of court, and when I was told that I hadn't turned up, I didn't even realise I hadn't turned up. I just went and apologised. But at any rate, I didn't get 18 months of solitary confinement. But at any rate, no, no, if you look at history, if you're a student of history, then you'll be able to realise that Tommy Robinson is very likely a future Prime Minister of England.

If you look at history, just like Michael Collins, just like Eamon de Valera and so on, they were all at one time criminals who became leaders in their country. You understand? When it comes to Irish politics, before I let you go, do you know what Elon thinks of the country, what he thinks of Ireland? You've been to Ireland with him, is that right? Oh, yes. No, no, this is what we think of Ireland.

If we could, and we had the time, we would go to the bluegrass country that I've seen there, and we would have a horse training facility where we would never leave, and we would be there every day, 24 hours a day for the whole year, every year. It's so nice.

That's what we would do. So we've been to Ireland many times. We've been right around Ireland. I've been to all the places that you can go as a tourist, well, I suppose as a tourist, but even a bit more than that. I've been to Monkstown. I've been in the pubs with all the guys. I know the places. Ireland is fabulous, and the Irish people are among the nicest people

I've ever met in my life. And I have so many friends from them. So Ireland appointed me, because of my connections with Ireland, to put in the radio in South Africa, in Lesotho, to broadcast anti-apartheid propaganda back in 1982. Ireland, Ireland, the government of Ireland appointed me to be the local representative. That's how close I was with Ireland.

to do the local consulting engineering on it. But at any rate, Ireland is a place we love. And, you know, nobody, everybody loves Ireland. It's not like this. It's actually one of those lucky countries, you know. I hope I haven't dissuaded you of that. Errol, listen, thanks a million for speaking to us. OK, bye. The Hard Shoulder with Ciarán Cotterhy. With the MG Hybrid and Electric range. Weekdays from 4 on Newstalk.