Bill Maher once had high hopes for Elon Musk—and for humankind.
The comedian and Real Time With Bill Maher host has always been skeptical of Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars, but he did once think the world’s richest man would be the one to save humanity from global warming, he said during Sunday’s episode of his podcast Club Random.
“We’re plainly going to have to invent our way out of it,” Maher said, and he added that he thought the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla would be the guy to do it. “But now I don’t think we will, because [Musk] doesn’t give a s--- about Earth. He wants to go to Mars. He treats planets the way he does baby mamas—next!”
Musk—who serves as a top adviser to President Donald Trump—has fathered 14 known children with four women. He and his ex-wife Justine Wilson had six children, including one who died as an infant. Among them is their transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, 20, who is a vocal critic of her estranged father.
Then Musk has three children with his ex-partner, the Canadian singer Grimes; four with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink; and one with a 26-year-old MAGA influencer named Ashley St. Clair.
Many of the children were conceived via IVF and born through surrogacy.
Musk has said that falling birth rates in Western countries keep him up at night—something Maher said he would “never understand.”
The comedian did give Musk credit, though, for talking about the need to be on guard against the dangers of artificial intelligence before the technology was on most people’s radar.
His guest, author and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, said she still held out hope that Musk wanted to protect “carbon-based beings” from killer AI robots.
But lately he’s been busy trying to dismantle the federal government as Trump’s mega donor and cost-cutting adviser. His “department” of government efficiency has spent the last two months trying to shutter federal agencies, cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts—including life-saving scientific research—and purge the civil service.
“Trump and Elon remind me of—people always ask me if they’re Shakespearean, but I think they’re more like Greek gods,” Dowd said. “They’re sort of capricious and cruel, and they do what they like. It’s like watching Zeus and Dionysus, the god of fertility.”
