Takeaways From a New Elon Musk Biography: Ukraine, Trump and More

A new biography of Elon Musk portrays the billionaire entrepreneur as a complex, tortured figure whose brilliance is often overshadowed by his inability to relate on a human level to the people around him — his wives, his children and those on whom he relied to help develop the space exploration and electric car businesses that made him the wealthiest man on Earth.

Mr. Musk’s life so far — his difficult childhood in South Africa, his stormy romantic relationships, his success as a visionary who built SpaceX and Tesla, and his impetuous decision to buy Twitter — is detailed through scores of interviews with his family, friends, business associates and Mr. Musk himself.

The book, which will be released on Tuesday, is by Walter Isaacson, the journalist whose previous works have chronicled the lives of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin.

It opens with a quote from Mr. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, who once said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

The New York Times bought copies of the book at a retail store that was selling it in advance of its authorized release.

Twitter, Now Known as X

Mr. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, after a surprise bid for the company and then a seeming reluctance to follow through with the deal.

• Days after Twitter’s board approved the deal, Mr. Musk told his four teenage sons that he had purchased the social network to sway the next U.S. presidential election. “How else are we going to get Trump elected in 2024?” he said. (It was a joke, Mr. Isaacson writes, but Mr. Musk’s sons still didn’t understand his rationale for buying Twitter, an app they rarely used.)

• After acquiring Twitter, Mr. Musk and his lieutenants combed through its employees’ internal communications and social media posts, looking for signs of disloyalty, Mr. Isaacson writes. The “musketeers,” as Musk loyalists were known inside Twitter, searched Twitter’s Slack archives for keywords including “Elon,” and fired dozens of employees who had made snarky comments about Mr. Musk.

• Mr. Musk staged a surprise raid on a Twitter data facility in Sacramento, Calif., last winter, shortly after acquiring the company. Mr. Musk had decided to move servers housed in the facility to another Twitter data center to cut costs, but Twitter’s infrastructure leaders warned him that moving the expensive equipment safely could take months. In a fit of anger, Mr. Musk decided to move the servers himself, enlisting a small team and a flock of moving vans to haul them away on Christmas Eve. (He later said he regretted the decision, which led to service outages.)

Personal Life

Mr. Musk’s sprawling family has been a source of comfort amid the frequent turmoil of his industry-spanning business interests, Mr. Isaacson writes. But his relationship with his father, Errol, is a source of trauma that remains with him.

• Mr. Musk’s father is described as emotionally and physically abusive and is quoted speaking disparagingly of Black people. When Mr. Musk agreed in 2016 to meet his father, from whom he has been largely estranged, a friend recalls to Mr. Isaacson, “It was the only time I had ever seen Elon’s hands shaking.” Mr. Isaacson writes, “There are certain people who occupy a demon’s corner of Musk’s head space. They trigger him, turn him dark, and rouse a cold anger. His father is number one.”

• While the musician Grimes, also known as Claire Boucher, was giving birth to his son X in May 2020, Mr. Musk took a picture of the delivery and shared it with his friends and family, including her father and brothers. Grimes was understandably horrified and scrambled to get it deleted. “He was just clueless about why I’d be upset,” she told Mr. Isaacson.

Politics and Trump

Mr. Musk’s politics defy simple categorization. Despite his attacks on liberal critics, his rants against “woke” Democrats and his occasional promotion of far-right conspiracy theories, he is portrayed as more disillusioned with the leftward drift of the Democratic Party than he is a fan of Republicans.

• Mr. Musk repeatedly professes not to be an admirer of former President Donald J. Trump, telling his biographer, “I’m not Trump’s fan. He’s disruptive.” Mr. Isaacson writes that Mr. Musk harbors a “deep disdain” for the former president “whom he considered a con man” and seemed, Mr. Musk says, “kind of nuts.”

• But neither is he a Biden supporter, though he tells Mr. Isaacson that he would have voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 had he cast a ballot. (He decided not to vote because he was registered in California and considered it a waste because the state was not competitive in the presidential election.) Mr. Musk…