5 Times Elon Musk Was Even Weirder Than JD Vance

Throughout Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, the former star of "The Apprentice" had two very vocal men at his side, championing his causes and trying to win him the election — Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Like Trump himself, both Vance and Musk have often courted controversy and proven themselves to be lightning rods for public outcry and accusations of just generally being awkward, combative weirdos.

As the campaign dragged on, the "Hillbilly Elegy" author began facing some heat for his very stilted, unnatural conversations with donut shop employees; his insulting comments about women who don't have children; and a wild, JD Vance rumor about his tawdry affair with a sofa. Even after Trump and Vance managed to win the election, Vance still made stuff weird with an awkward Trump-centric Thanksgiving meme that jokingly implied he and the president were husband and wife.

All that being said, Musk has a widely recognized penchant for being full-bore weird as well. And, when you're the richest man in the world with a net worth of over $400 billion, you can afford new and exciting ways to get extra weird. For every strange gaffe or robotic campaign stop Vance became famous for, Musk has upped the ante with his own bizarre, trolling behavior.

For a well-educated man in his 50s, it seems like Elon Musk is stuck in his childhood when it comes to jumping. However, despite his conspicuous lack of coordination, he certainly does love to jump, and it's just as baffling every time. The weird jump that really grabbed people's attention came in October 2024 at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Musk leaped onto the stage with his hands thrust in the air, before he gleefully jabbed at the sky with his hands and bounced on his heels.

Elon Musk jumps on stage pic.twitter.com/ox6jyTrseH

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2024

New York Times reporter Jacob Gallagher perfectly captured the vibe at the time, writing, "He jumped like a Pixy Stix-enhanced toddler who was up well past his bedtime... Musk charged onto the garlanded stage, as if he had been called to come on down at 'The Price Is Right.'" The photos that emerged from the rally went viral as people asked the same question: What is he doing? Is that what he thinks jumping is? Why is he doing so many of his little jumps?

Over the years, Elon Musk has tried his hand at numerous business ventures inside the tech sector, from investing in online banking platforms such as PayPal to helming ventures that look to send men to Mars or create high-speed Hyperloop transportation systems. He's essentially been a real-world Tony Stark, minus all the heroism, the moral compass, or good will from the masses. However, he's also occasionally stepped outside his role as a tech mogul and inventor to develop a perfume that smells like burnt hair, creatively named "Burnt Hair."

Selling for $100 per bottle originally — and sold through Musk's side-project The Boring Company — the CEO claimed at the time of the perfume's 2022 release that 30,000 bottles had been produced and that the entire stock had sold out in a matter of days. The unisex scent's website described it as "the essence of repugnant desire" and said that it smells "like leaning over a candle at the dinner table." However, some users have had different interpretations of the smell. Over at Business Insider, the staff tried out the scent to get some reactions from the writers. "It smells like burning cardboard, like when you put a pizza box in a campfire," one writer shared, while another said it smells "like my grandfather just got home from the poker room after a night out."

Among his numerous eccentricities, Musk's obsessions have become a core component of who he is. Musk's addiction to social media — especially to his own social media platform, X (formerly Twitter) — is well documented, and he's far from the only person who habitually posts flurries of messages to followers. However, when you post as much as Musk does, you sometimes reveal other things about yourself. For the tech mogul, he's proven time and again just how much he loves the word "weird."

As one X user pointed out in July 2024, "It's really weird Elon Musk uses the word 'weird' so often. Dude is weird!" This caption accompanied a video of all the times Musk has called someone or something "weird" on the social media platform, and it really is a whole lot. A search for the term among his tweets calls up nearly 100 posts, many of which are replies to other posts in which Musk has commented, simply, "weird."

It's really weird Elon Musk uses the word "weird" so often. Dude is weird! pic.twitter.com/hnigep9El0

— Miss Jilianne (@MissJilianne) July 30, 2024

His other obsession is evident in the renamed platform itself. For as long as Musk has been an entrepreneur, he's had a very evident love for the letter X. His first company's website was X.com, an online banking venture. His space exploration company is known as SpaceX, he spent a great deal of money trying to rebrand Twitter as X (and it still hasn't really stuck for most people), and his artificial intelligence company is called xAI. Musk's fascination with the angular alphabetical entry even played a prominent role in the naming of one of his 12 children.

Elon Musk is the father of 12 children with three different women — including one of his company's execs, with whom he had twins. Musk and his ex-wife, Justine Musk, who initially blew him off on their first date, gave their children some beautiful, unique names that, most importantly, you could spell with a normal keyboard — names like Griffin, Kai, and Saxon, for example. Then, in 2020, Musk and his girlfriend, musician Grimes, announced the birth of their first son: X Æ A-12 Musk. The name was so weird, right off the bat, that they legally had to change the "12" to "Xii" to meet California birth certificate regulations.

When Musk sat down for a chat on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, he explained that the name was pronounced "X Ash A Twelve." Grimes, meanwhile, broke the name down on X to explain the different parts that went into deciding on a random string of characters. According to the singer, X stands for "the unknown variable," the Æ stands for "my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)" and the A-12 is the "precursor to SR-17 [71] (our favorite aircraft)." So that helpfully cleared everything up for everyone and there were no more questions.

•X, the unknown variable ⚔️
•Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)
•A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent 🤍
+
(A=Archangel, my favorite song)
(⚔️🐁 metal rat)

— 𝖦𝗋𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗌 ⏳ (@Grimezsz) May 6, 2020

Amid their frequent splits and reconciliations, Musk and Grimes managed to welcome two more uniquely named children together. First, they welcomed daughter Exa Dark Sideræl Musk in 2021 and then leaned into the cyberpunk vibe of their first son's name when they welcomed their second son in 2022 and went with the uniquely futuristic moniker Techno Mechanicus Musk.

In 2018, 12 children and their soccer coach became trapped in a cave in northern Thailand, and their plight became international news. People from all over the world tried to find ways to help and rescue the children. Ultimately, a British cave diver in his 60s named Vernon Unsworth — who lived in Thailand and the U.K., traveling frequently — was instrumental in getting authorities to bring together a team of experts, who successfully rescued the children and were objectively heroes on the international stage.

Amid the rescue planning, Elon Musk decided to try to fix the problem with experimental tech and a lot of social media. He sent over a mini-submarine that he claimed could help rescue efforts. He posted videos of the submarine being tested in lab conditions and posted a great deal about his special kid-sized submarine invention. Ultimately, it was never used. After the kids were rescued, Unsworth was critical of Musk's efforts, arguing that the submarine was nothing but a PR stunt.

In a precursor to the sort of off-the-cuff, unhinged tweeting and messy public feuds Musk has become known for, the Tesla CEO went on a social media tirade against Unsworth for insulting him. He went on to call the heroic diver a "pedo guy," and then doubled down on that claim in a follow-up tweet, both of which were later deleted. Musk later apologized on X, but Unsworth sued him for defamation. Musk won the defamation lawsuit by claiming he was just kidding and never thought his millions of followers would take what he said literally.