The 4-year-old son of Elon Musk appears to have become an almost indispensable accessory for his public appearances as the new head of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, but the boy’s mother, the musician Grimes, isn’t happy about it.

Grimes, who shares three children with her former partner Musk, expressed her unhappiness on his social media platform X, after Musk brought their young son with him to an Oval Office press conference with Trump on Tuesday, where he defended his efforts to drastically cut federal spending and dismiss workers across the U.S. government.

In response to an X post about how polite the boy appeared in the Oval Office, Grimes “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.”

said:

Elon Musk and Grimes attend the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images) 

The singer, whose real name is Claire Boucher, drew sympathy from others who worried that the boy was being used by his billionaire father under “bizarre circumstances.”

“as a prop”

Grimes dated Musk from 2018 and 2022 and had three children with him, the latter two by surrogate. The oldest is their son, X Æ A-Xii, who is commonly referred to as X, like the social media platform Musk bought in 2022.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell opined that X’s presence in the Oval Office Tuesday was a “power play” by Musk, the world’s richest man, to exercise his dominance over the president and to show that he can do “whatever he wants in that room.” On his show, uesday night, O’Donnell said, “When Donald trump is your boss, you don’t bring your kid into a business meeting with Donald Trump.”