Family Matters: Irin Carmon

Bad Dada Why is Elon Musk dragging his 3-year-old all over the world?

ON A RAINY NIGHT in early April, Elon Musk brought his young son XÆ A-12-whom everyone calls X-to the Lobster Club for a PBS-documentary-screening party. "The younger Musk wandered around the restaurant wearing a Tesla shirt" while his father schmoozed with guests, the New York Times reported under the headline "Partying on a Tuesday With Elon Musk and His 3-Year-Old."

Photos show a cheerful Musk leaning in to chat with the TV series' executive producer, Kathryn Murdoch. Had Tesla shares tumbled after the company's disastrous first-quarter results? Did the market-research firm Caliber say the day before that the Tesla CEO's right-wing rants and public feuds were likely "contributing to the reputational downfall" of the brand, hurting sales? Yes to both. But how adorable did Lil X, as his father has called him, look in that picture? The message, intentional or otherwise, was clear: This was not the erratic, share-tanking shitposter you've heard about but a cuddly dad who has it all.

Nor was this the first time X, Musk's eldest son with the singer Grimes, had been carted around the way children his age might clutch a stuffie. What's weird is how little flak Musk gets for this behavior, which often gets chalked up to charming eccentricity or Musk being Musk. His fatherly antics-met with admiration on the platform formerly known as Twitter, which he owns-are evidence of Musk showing his personal commitment to reversing the population collapse he rarely fails to mention. "At the end of the day, birth rate is all that matters for civilizational continuity," he recently posted, bemoaning the rise of young people who identify as LGBTQ. Schlepping one of his ten known children around becomes another way to show how much skin he has in that doomerist game.