The center of attention during a White House press briefing in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon wasn’t President Donald Trump. It wasn’t even Elon Musk, the billionaire turned Trump sidekick who has been tasked with running the new Department of Government Efficiency under the administration.
No, the star of the day was X AE A-XII, a.k.a. X, Musk’s four-year-old son, whom he brought along. It’s unclear why Musk took X, the oldest of his three children with singer Grimes and one of his 12 kids overall, to his press conference, but it’s become a pattern for the billionaire businessman. X (but never any of the other children) has been a constant presence by his dad’s side for the past year or so, accompanying his dad to Mar-a-Lago, events, and parties.
Although Musk gave a 30-minute briefing on his work at DOGE, which is supposed to be reducing “wasteful” government spending, all eyes were on little X.
The preschooler immediately went viral for, well, acting like a preschooler. He interrupted his father and made funny faces. He picked his nose and seemed to wipe it on the desk. He mimicked his dad and told the president to “shush your mouth.” At one point, it appeared X ordered Trump to “go away.”
The president seemed visibly annoyed at times that the child was there but joked about it as he began to speak.
“This is X, and he’s a great guy—high IQ,” Trump said.
At one point Musk placed his son on his shoulders. The boy rolled his eyes in boredom, and then began to mess around, putting his fingers in his dad’s ears as Musk struggled to listen to reporters’ questions.
“Sorry for this,” Musk said to the gathered media. “Otherwise, I might enjoy this, but as he’s sticking his fingers in my ears.”
X’s antics were soon the only thing anyone was talking about coming out of the press conference (sorry, DOGE). Some people were tickled or charmed by the boy, calling him “adorable” and saying he brought “playful energy” to the White House.
Others online jokingly fashioned him as some sort of #resistance hero, saying that the child’s sassing of Trump and refusal to pay attention was an act of radical pushback against the administration’s policies.
“Little Democrat,” said one person on Twitter.
And yeah, sure, it was cute to see a child in the Oval Office, being given the space and understanding that he would act exactly as you’d expect. The problem is that this privilege is one that only a father, like Musk, could exercise.
I know it’s somewhat of a cliché to say, but what do you think would happen if a high-powered woman in the American government brought her kid to a press conference?
Musk isn’t exactly getting praised for bringing X along, but he’s not being questioned for it either. The general consensus is that the press conference is a zany viral moment, an odd thing for someone in a position of power in the government to do, but not anything deeper.
Musk isn’t being questioned about whether he’s being a good parent for bringing his kid to work, and he’s not being treated as if he’s a less serious person because he consistently brings his child with him. In fact, there’s been speculation that one of the reasons Musk has made X his constant companion is to improve his public image, to change the perception of himself from an online provocateur to, as New York Magazine put it, a “cuddly dad who has it all.”
This, of course, is a pretty clear-cut example of the difference between being a mother and being a father. Working moms in the US face, according to the National Institutes of Health, a “motherhood penalty,” meaning they are viewed as “unfit for leadership roles, are evaluated as less competent and less committed to their careers, receive lower salaries, and are denied advancement opportunities.” Once a man becomes a father, he is often treated as more respectable and serious, receiving a “fatherhood premium.”
As one particularly astute TikTok puts it, Americans “expect women to work like they don't mother, and mother like they don’t work.” To be a working mother in this country is to face a series of hurdles, from the lack of mandated time to recover from giving birth (the US is one of six countries with no federal paid leave) to facing discrimination when you return.
For Musk, his child is a complementary accessory, something he can slide onto his shoulders to telegraph something positive about himself. Women don’t have that luxury. Our mothering is something that we are usually forced to tuck away, to shake off before we walk in the door of our office. To be seen with our child in our own workplace, not to mention the most influential workplace in the country, is usually a risk we cannot take.
When an influential or powerful mother does bring their child to work, it’s usually done as a statement or a celebration of fixing a long-held discriminatory policy. When Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois brought her newborn daughter onto the chamber floor to cast a vote in 2018, she did so to mark the fact that the Senate had just changed a rule that did not allow babies in the chamber. Similarly, Australian senator Larissa Waters famously breastfed her newborn during a vote in 2017 to recognize the fact that a rule had recently been passed allowing her to do so. In contrast, Musk’s son was simply just being a kid with his parent at work, a child allowed to be in a space that children usually are not.
Speaking of mothers, Elon Musk is embroiled in a long and ugly custody battle with Grimes over their shared children, and she’s accused him of keeping X from her. When a Twitter user informed Grimes that her son had been “very cute” and “polite” at the White House, she responded that she had no idea her child was even there.
“He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank u for alerting me. But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh,” she wrote.
Grimes has shared that she has attempted to keep her son out of the public eye but has no way to stop Musk from doing so. If Musk wants to use his son to gather public attention and praise for being a father, there’s nothing the child’s mother can do to stop it.
“I am desperate to solve it,” she has said. “It’s a personal tragedy to me.”
