Back in 2022, Business Insider reported that Elon Musk had secretly fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at one of his companies. “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” he tweeted at the time. “Mark my words, they are sadly true.” An obsession with procreating aside, the news was fairly surprising at the time—not only because it brought Musk’s offspring headcount to near-double digits but because Zilis was one of his own employees, which is generally considered a no-no in the modern-day workplace. Yet, as it turns out, Zilis wasn’t even the first employee Musk proposed reproducing with.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, in a long story about Musk’s “boundary-blurring relationships with women at SpaceX,” that in 2013, a woman who directly reported to the billionaire “alleged that Musk had asked her on multiple occasions to have his babies, according to people familiar with the allegations.” In contrast to Zilis, who took Musk up on his proposal after he reportedly offered his sperm to her, the other woman declined, and apparently had to do so more than once. After this, according to the Journal, she continued to work for SpaceX but the relationship with Musk “deteriorated.” In addition to the baby business, people familiar with the matter also told the Journal that Musk “denied the woman a raise and complained about her performance.” She later left the company with a cash and stock exit package worth more than $1 million, according to the report.
Allegedly asking someone in his employ to bear his children is not the only bit of inappropriateness the Journal alleged in its story. There was also this:
In affidavits signed by the woman and provided to the Journal by her lawyers—who also happen to represent Musk—the woman claimed that there was no “romantic relationship” with the SpaceX CEO while she was employed from 2017 to 2019, though she confirmed they’d had a romantic relationship in the past.
In 2022, Business Insider reported that Musk allegedly exposed himself to a SpaceX flight attendant and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex acts. She reportedly said no, and the company allegedly reduced her shifts. According to Insider, SpaceX eventually agreed to paid the woman $250,000. Musk called the claims “utterly untrue“ and proposed the scandal be dubbed “Elongate.”
In an equally bizarre anecdote, the Journal also reported this week that a SpaceX employee who worked for both Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president, was accused by Shotwell of having an affair with the exec’s husband after helping plan a surprise birthday party for her. Afterwards, Shotwell reportedly tried to push the woman out—and then Musk “initiated a sexual relationship with the woman, who by that time was working directly for him alone,” the woman reportedly told people close to her.
Here’s more from the Journal:
When the woman felt the relationship was getting more serious, and broached the topic of going out to dinner, Musk reportedly said they couldn’t be seen in public together, “citing,” per the Journal, “ongoing negotiations over a possible divorce from [Talulah] Riley,” from whom he was separated at the time. He reportedly had his chief of staff “handle the woman’s exit” from the company; in order to receive $85,000 in cash for unpaid work, she was required to “sign an agreement that required her to release Musk from potential legal claims ‘known and unknown,’ and to keep information about him ‘in strictest confidence,’” including the agreement. Two days before she officially left the company, Musk reportedly texted her, at 11:25 p.m., “Drinks?” Later, according to the Journal, he claimed in text and emails that she had targeted him when he was in a vulnerable state over his separation. “You insisted on coming to my house to sleep with me when I was just sad and tired and wanted to be alone,” he reportedly wrote in one message.
Musk did not reply to the Journal’s requests for comment. In a statement, Shotwell said: “The untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history in your email paint a completely misleading narrative. I continue to be amazed by what this extraordinary group of people are achieving every day even amidst all the forces acting against us. And Elon is one of the best humans I know.”
On Wednesday, eight former SpaceX employees sued the company and Musk, accusing the billionaire of personally ordering them to be fired after they wrote an open letter accusing SpaceX of allowing sexual harassment at the company. The suit claims Musk “runs his company in the dark ages—treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the ‘Animal House’ environment that if they don’t like it they can seek employment elsewhere.” SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
So that would be a “no”
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To be clear, this is only an apples-to-oranges situation if the apple in question is actually an orange in disguise
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And now let’s hear from Fox Business re: a thing that will literally never happen
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