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Elon Musk’s daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson has revealed in an interview with Teen Vogue that she isn’t scared of her “pathetic man-child” father and doesn’t care how much money he has.

Wilson, 20, came out as transgender in 2022 and was successfully granted a name and gender change in California. Needless to say, this did not sit well with her father, who is currently part of Trump’s right-wing and actively anti-transgender government. Two years later, in 2024, Musk spoke about her in an interview with Jordan Peterson, repeatedly using her former name and claiming she’d been “killed by the woke mind virus.”

According to Teen Vogue, in the interview with Peterson, Musk built on the picture of Wilson painted in Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography Elon Musk. In the book, according to Wilson, she was an angry, rebellious child, blinded by radical anticapitalist ideology and hurting her father with her rash decisions.

She told the publication that Isaacson had “an agenda when writing his book, which was to make Elon look good, or look more complex than he is. In order to do that, he needed to villainise the trans teenager and make it seem like there were two reasonable sides to the story.”

Wilson said she doesn’t have room to care anymore and finds it annoying to be associated with Musk. She said the “most cathartic moment” in her entire life was when she spoke out against Musk on Threads — Meta’s version of X (formerly Twitter).

“I had all this pent-up energy, I had wanted to speak out for so long after being [essentially] defamed in a book, after being doxxed. Everything that had gone on — especially in my childhood — when that finally happened, it was the most cathartic experience I have ever had. And then I was like, Okay, whatever,” she told the publication.

When asked what about all the power Musk — who routinely ranks as the richest man — yields, Wilson said, “Nah, nah, nah. I don’t give a f***. 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 f*** how much money anyone has. I don’t. I really don’t. He owns Twitter. Okay. Congratulations.

“People thrive off of fear. I’m not giving anyone that space in my mind. The only thing that gets to live free in my mind are drag queens.”

Anyone who follows Wilson on social media would know she frequently posts about Musk, however, she clarified that her father and his politics do not take up a lot of space in her day-to-day life.

“I mean, I’ll see things about him in the news and think, That’s f***ing cringe, I should probably post about this and denounce it, which I have done a few times.”

She called Musk’s alleged Nazi salute at a Trump rally “insane”, saying it was definitely the Sieg Heil salute.

“Honey, we’re going to call a fig a fig, and we’re going to call a Nazi salute what it was. The crowd is equally to blame, and I feel like people are not talking about that. That crowd should be denounced.”

Money and politics

When asked if she was a Marxist, because she was dubbed a “radical Marxist” in Isaacson’s book, Wilson said she was a leftist, not a Marxist.

“I describe myself by the things that I personally believe in and the things that I feel are pretty common sense, if you think about it for more than two seconds. I believe in [universal basic income]. I believe in free health care. I believe food, shelter, and water are human rights.”

She added that wealth inequality was one of the biggest problems in the United States at the moment, and believed workers should be fairly compensated for their work instead of wealth being hoarded by mega-billionaires. “I’ve met some of these billionaires — they’re not very good people. I don’t think any of them are.”

Wilson said that after seeing “extravagant wealth” firsthand while living in Los Angeles and also watching the homelessness problem and wealth gap she wondered how the situation was fair.

“You have to inevitably come to the conclusion it’s not. 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,” she told Teen Vogue.

When asked if her parent’s politics had changed over time, and whether Elon was always like this, Wilson refused to answer.

“I’m sorry, but [his views are] not because of me,” she said adding that Musk turning right because she was transgender was “a convenient narrative.”

“That’s just not the case. That’s not what that does to people. Him going further on the right, and I’m going to use the word ‘further’ — make sure you put ‘further’ in there — is not because of me. That’s insane.”

She continued that a person’s Twitter profile was not their reality and to judge everything a person said online as what they really believed was “dumb”.

“I haven’t talked to him since 2020. That was almost half a decade ago at this point. Thank God.”

Siblings galore

Wilson said she did not know how many siblings she had if half-siblings were included.

“That’s just a fun fact. It’s really good for two truths and a lie.”

It’s public information that Musk has fathered 14 children (that we know of) with four women. According to Teen Vogue, the list goes, six including Vivian with his ex-wife Justine Wilson; four with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at the Musk-owned company Neuralink; and three with the musician Grimes.

On February 14, conservative influencer Ashley St Clair announced a 13th child, whom Musk hasn’t acknowledged yet and on February 28, Zilis reportedly gave birth to the billionaire’s 14th child.

“I found out about the Shivon Zilis thing the same time everyone else did. I had no idea before that,” Wilson said, adding that she found out about Grimes having a second child because of a drag queen’s Reddit post.

“For a time, me and Grimes were not really in communication because I wasn’t in communication with anyone in that family, which still holds true. Tatianna from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2 and RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars 2 tweeted, “[Not] Grimes popp[in] out another axolotl,” which made the front-page of the RuPaul’s Drag Race subreddit, which is how I found out about it.”

Wilson said she does not keep up with her father’s side of the family and her mother does not either. “She’s divorced, werk. I don’t really give a f*** what they do. This is not my problem, okay?”

Giving advice to trans youth, she said, “Don’t let other people’s perceptions of you affect your own. Don’t be ashamed of being trans in a world that constantly tries to make us ashamed of who or what we are.”

Cover photo via Teen Vogue