ELON Musk’s dad Errol has rubbished claims by the writer of a new biography of his son that the tech tycoon flies into “demon mode.”
Author Walter Isaacson claimed ahead of his upcoming book about the Tesla CEO that Musk’s ex-girlfriend and mom of two of his kids, Grimes, had coined the term.
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Isaacson said in an interview that the recording artist – born Claire Boucher – told him it could be “unpleasant” to be around Musk, 52, in that state but that he “gets s**t done.”
The author says he witnessed during two years of observing Musk’s day-to-day that he could be “dark” and “with a real lack of empathy” when at his most productive.
Speaking from his home in South Africa, retired electromechanical engineer Errol, 77, told The U.S. Sun: “Elon has no demon mode. That’s tripe.
“Demon suggests something dark. Elon has intense mode. That’s different.
“It’s a mode in which he forgoes all other things in favor of one very important thing, including sleep, friendships, dates, social life, self-care, food, and more.
“All to try and ensure success.
“Importantly, it is not a decision he makes. It comes upon him – and me – by itself.”
Asked if Elon’s intensity involved what Isaacson describes as a “maniacal sense of urgency,” Errol replied: “Maniacs don’t achieve anything.
“The word is ‘focused,’ highly focused. Like a magnifying glass on a piece of paper.
“People may interpret such behavior as brutal or lacking in empathy, but that’s not what it is.”
Isaacson – whose book titled Elon Musk will be released next week – says he witnessed how the X/Twitter CEO would “go dark” during moments of rage when confronting employees.
The writer has previously published hit books on famous figures such as Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin.
He said: “I’d know that he was just going to rip that person apart.
“He is just brutal.
“The thing that I noticed is that once he finishes doing it — and it was never physical, and it was almost done in a flat monotone — but he would just really attack people, and then a few days later, if they absorbed the lesson, he’d forget about it.
“It would be as if he went from becoming Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde and then didn’t even think that much or remember that much of how tough he had been on people.”
Errol told The U.S. Sun last week that he fears that his firstborn son could be assassinated for going up against the United States government.
He also hit back at claims in a bombshell report in The New Yorker that his son is on drugs and suffering from mental health issues.
Errol told The U.S. Sun in June that he believes Elon has put himself in a “no-win situation” with a proposed cage fight with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
He also said the “humiliation would be total” for Elon if he loses against Zuckerberg.
Errol also slammed an AI-generated pic of his son as “totally inaccurate” and shared childhood photos to prove his point.
In April, Errol revealed details about his claim to have once bought a share in an emerald business in Zambia, which Elon has disputed.
Earlier this year, Errol told The U.S. Sun that his son is a “force for good” who also believed that the internet would have been invented by the year 1900 if Napoleon Bonaparte hadn’t been defeated.
And, in September last year, Errol admitted to shooting armed intruders in South Africa in 1998 while his then six-year-old daughter Ali clung to his leg.
Also last year, The U.S. Sun revealed Errol’s claim that he had fathered a child with his stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, and that he had been asked to donate sperm to impregnate high-class women in Colombia.
