Elon Musk links trans people to Tesla attacks the same day his estranged daughter criticizes him in Teen Vogue interview
By Liam Reilly | CNN
The same day Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, published her second-ever interview with a media outlet, the billionaire media mogul used his X platform to insinuate trans people are behind reports of attacks on Teslas.
During her interview with Teen Vogue, Wilson said she doesn’t “give a f**k” about Musk, calling him a “pathetic man-child.”
“I don’t give a f**k how much money anyone has,” Wilson told the publication. “I don’t. I really don’t. He owns Twitter. Okay.”
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The 20-year-old said she often learns about Musk’s actions from the news, saying she should “probably post about this and denounce it, which I have done a few times.”
“The Nazi salute sh*t was insane,” Wilson said in reference to Musk’s performance of a straight-armed salute during Donald Trump’s inauguration that he has denied was a Nazi gesture. “That sh*t was definitely a Nazi salute.”
This is hardly the first time that Wilson, who has not spoken to Musk since 2020, has called out the billionaire.
In July 2024, Musk took to his X platform to say that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic,” adding that, as a child, she would “pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was ‘fabulous!’” Three days later, Musk sat down with Jordan Peterson for a two-plus-hour live stream on X during which the media mogul claimed his “son” had been “killed” by “the woke mind virus.”
Musk’s comments to Peterson effectively denied his daughter’s trans identity, reflecting his embrace of far-right politics, which often seek to crack down on transgender people’s rights and gender affirming care, and foreshadowed the politics he has pushed in his advisory role to Trump.
CNN has reached out to Musk for comment.
Wilson took to Threads — X’s Meta-owned rival — the same day to call out Musk for spreading misinformation, saying that his July 2024 X post was “entirely fake” before adding “literally none of this ever happened.”
Later that same day, NBC News published an exclusive interview with Wilson, who emphasized that Musk “was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged.”
In the 12 hours since Wilson’s Teen Vogue interview published, the billionaire has alleged that New York will attempt to illegally usher in non-citizen voting and amplified a post claiming that 10,000 voters in Arizona used the same social security number to vote.
Musk also repeatedly circulated posts connecting the reports of vandalism on Teslas to trans people.
“What are the statistics on trans violence,” Musk asked in yet another X post on Thursday. “The probability of a trans person being violent appears to be vastly higher than non-trans. Hormone injections cause extreme emotional volatility. That is simply a fact.”
Musk on Thursday also shared a clip from Fox News in which anchor Harris Faulkner posited a hypothetical in which a Tesla set on fire by vandals could result in a human death, asking White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt if that could merit the death penalty.
“What I can tell you is that President Trump condemns this violence, and he is determined to restore law and order in our country, and he will ensure that the harshest penalties are pursued for those who are engaging in this vicious violence that we have seen targeted at this American company,” Leavitt said in response to Faulkner’s hypothetical scenario.
A self-described “free speech absolutist,” Musk has also used X — which he acquired in October 2022 for $44 billion — to repeatedly attack immigrants and transgender people, and to spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Wilson’s interview in Teen Vogue, which also explores her queerness, comes as Trump has made dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs a cornerstone of his new administration.
Musk, a Trump ally, has not shied away from voicing his disapproval of DEI programs, calling it “just another word for racism” last year and saying that “DEI must DIE” in a December 2023 X post. And, under his supervision, the Department of Government Efficiency in February threatened to pull federal funding for public schools and universities that failed to end their DEI programs within two weeks.
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