Elon Musk shared a photo of himself partying with Sergey Brin to rubbish rumours that he had an affair with the Google co-founder’s wife. He sent the photo to the New York Post late on Sunday - hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that the alleged affair led to Brin filing for divorce and ended his longtime friendship with Musk.
Musk branded the WSJ report “total bs” in a tweet, saying that he and Sergey Brin were “at a party together last night” and insisting that there was nothing romantic between him and Brin’s wife Nicole Shanahan.
“That was Sergey and me yesterday afternoon!” wrote Elon Musk for the picture which shows him laughing for the camera with Brin, who once helped the Tesla chief during the financial crisis of 2008 by giving him $500,000.
“Took this pic only two hours ago,” Musk told The Post as he strongly denied rumours of a friendship-ruining affair with the wife of his friend and fellow billionaire Sergey Brin.
“Nicole and Sergey’s divorce has absolutely nothing to do with me,” he told the news outlet in an email.
“I am sure both Nicole and Sergey would confirm that. I spoke with both Sergey and Nicole about this and they say the story isn’t coming from them, so [it] must be a case of broken telephone, two or three layers removed,” he said.
He also doubled down on earlier claims that he had not met Shanahan more than two times in three years. “And, not to dodge the question, I have only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around,” Musk said.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief slammed the media in general and Wall Street Journal in particular for “character assassination attacks,” hinting that he could take a break from the public eye.
“The amount of attention on me has gone supernova, which super sucks. Unfortunately, even trivial articles about me generate a lot of clicks,” he tweeted hours after he dismissed all the articles as “nothing-burgers”.
“Will try my best to be heads down focused on doing useful things for civilization,” he added.
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