Vivian Jenna Wilson Says She’s Not to Blame for Estranged Dad Elon Musk’s Fascist Turn

“It's such a convenient narrative, that the reason [Musk] turned right is because I'm a fucking tr*nny, and that's just not the case,” Wilson said in an interview with Teen Vogue.

By Kylie Cheung  |  March 21, 2025 | 12:16pm
Photo: Threads LatestPolitics
Vivian Jenna Wilson Says She’s Not to Blame for Estranged Dad Elon Musk’s Fascist Turn

Vivian Jenna Wilson is one of my favorite social media personalities, and she also happens to be fascist puppeteer Elon Musk’s estranged daughter. In 2022, at 18, Wilson changed her last name, stating in court documents that she wanted no relationship with Musk. Over the last few years, Wilson has become famous in part for her scathing roasts of the man who describes her as “dead” to him ever since she transitioned. (She previously condemned Musk’s “heinous incel nonsense” after he threatened to impregnate Taylor Swift in September.) But in a revealing new interview with Teen Vogue, Wilson described her frustrations with being associated with a man who recently performed what she sees as an overt Nazi salute on national television. 

Asked about whether her parents’ politics have changed over the years, Wilson said the popular thinking is that her identity as a trans woman radicalized Musk into the flaming transphobe and hateful bigot that he openly is today. “It’s such a convenient narrative, that the reason he turned right is because I’m a fucking tr*nny, and that’s just not the case,” Wilson said. “That’s not what that does to people. Him going further on the right, and I’m going to use the word ‘further’… is not because of me. That’s insane.” She continued, “I haven’t talked to him since 2020. That was almost half a decade ago at this point. Thank God.”

 

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Wilson said she feels obligated to denounce some of her father’s public acts. “I’ll see things about him in the news and think, ‘That’s fucking cringe, I should probably post about this and denounce it,’ which I have done a few times.” (She cites his Inauguration Day salute, for instance: “Honey, we’re going to call a fig a fig, and we’re going to call a Nazi salute what it was. That shit was definitely a Nazi salute.”) “But other than that, I don’t give a fuck about him. I really don’t. It’s annoying that people associate me with him,” Wilson said. “I just don’t have any room to care anymore.” She described Musk’s interview where he told far-right influencer Jordan Peterson that Wilson is “dead” to him as, for her, “cathartic.” 

Today, Wilson has a loving and supportive relationship with her mother Justine Wilson, a prolific romance and sci-fi writer and, as Wilson put it, the source of her varying “Vivian-isms.” Where Justine was immediately supportive when Wilson came out as trans to her, that… was not the case with Musk. He was “not supportive as my mom,” Wilson said, and by the time she came out to him, they hadn’t spoken in months, but she had to speak to him to obtain parental consent to start gender-affirming care.

Musk is perhaps the most dunked-on individual on the internet (deservedly so!), and no one reads him for filth like Wilson. “He’s a pathetic man-child. Why would I feel scared of him?” She continued: “Why should I be scared of this man? Because he’s rich? Oh, no, I’m trembling. Ooh, shivering in my boots here. I don’t give a fuck how much money anyone has. I don’t. I really don’t. He owns Twitter. Okay. Congratulations.”

Asked about Musk and right-wingers’ brand of wildly cringe posting, Wilson observed, “They’re not funny. You have to be funny. Most of them have the charisma of a soaking bathrobe. I mean, it’s not my fault that most of them don’t know how to be funny. It’s not that hard.” Wilson, herself, credits spending a lot of time in online, queer spaces for her own famed humor: “Getting into fights with other queer teenagers—that’s how you learn how to be quick and witty.”

Wilson, again, hasn’t spoken to Musk since 2020: “I don’t keep up with that side of the family because… I don’t. My mom doesn’t really either. She’s divorced, werk.” Wilson often jokes on Threads and Bluesky that she learns about her father’s other kids at the same time the rest of the world does. “If I had a nickel for every time I found out I had half-siblings through Reddit, I’d have two nickels,” she said. For instance, she learned about Grimes’ second child with Musk from social media posts from one of her favorite drag queens, Tatianna from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2: “[Not] Grimes popp[in] out another axolotl,” Tatianna tweeted; the tweet then reached the frontpage of the RuPaul’s Drag Race subreddit, “which is how I found out about it,” Wilson said.

Walter Isaacson describes Wilson as a “Marxist” in his 2023 biography of Musk, but Wilson clarified that she simply sees herself as a leftist who believes everyone should have access to free health care, food, and shelter. The economic privilege into which she, herself, was born radicalized her: “Seeing… extravagant wealth, firsthand, while living in Los Angeles and seeing the [huge] homelessness problem, the wealth gap… You start to wonder, ‘How is this fair?’ You have to inevitably come to the conclusion it’s not,” she said. “There is no world in which people should be owning multiple private planes, private islands, private whatever, while other people are sleeping on the street.”

 

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All of that said, I heartily recommend reading the entirety of the interview with its beautiful accompanying photoshoot. Ever since her public criticisms and biting jokes about Musk launched her into viral internet fame, she’s wielded her ever-growing platform to advocate for LGBTQ rights, a free Palestine, and human rights, more broadly. She is, in effect, the antithesis of her wildly evil biological father, and should be known and celebrated for many, many reasons beyond technically being his daughter.

 
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