Elon Musk’s Transgender Daughter Breaks Silence on “Nazi Salute” Allegations

The 21-year-old, who changed her name and gender at 18, implied the remarks were directed at Elon Musk without naming him.

Elon Musk’s Transgender Daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson Subtly Criticizes Him Over Alleged Gesture

Elon Musk’s estranged transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, has launched a veiled but sharp critique against her father after a video allegedly showing him performing a “Nazi salute” during former President Donald Trump’s inauguration rally went viral. The 21-year-old, who legally changed her name and gender at 18, disowned Musk and did not directly name him in her recent posts, but strongly hinted that her remarks were aimed at the billionaire.

In a post on Instagram’s Threads platform, Ms. Wilson wrote:
“I’m just gonna say let’s call a spade a f*ing spade. Especially if there were two spades done in succession based on the reaction of the first spade.”

As her comments gained traction, Ms. Wilson followed up with a sarcastic clarification, claiming her analogy was misunderstood.
“I don’t know why ya’ll are reacting with such vigor, I’m clearly only talking about card suits. I mean, I have ADHD, and this was CLEARLY just an accident that people happened to interpret to mean something other than just card suits. After all, there’s no proof I’m not just talking about card suits,” she wrote, mocking those who interpreted her words differently.
She further added, “People assuming that I’m not just talking about card suits just goes to show how dishonest people/the media can be.”

What Sparked the Controversy?

The uproar began after a video showing Elon Musk making a one-armed gesture during a speech at Trump’s rally went viral. Social media users drew comparisons to a Nazi salute. Musk dismissed the accusations, calling them baseless and tweeting on his platform X (formerly Twitter), “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, came to Musk’s defense. The ADL stated, “It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”

Strained Father-Daughter Relationship

The relationship between Ms. Wilson and her father has been fractured for years. Musk has frequently attributed the estrangement to what he calls “woke mind viruses.” Referring to his daughter’s gender transition, he stated in an interview:
“I was tricked into doing this. I lost my son, essentially. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead.”

He further added, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress.”

In response, Ms. Wilson, whose legal transition was finalized in a California court on June 22, 2022, stated she had completely cut ties with Musk. At the time, she declared, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form.”

A Growing Rift

This latest controversy has only highlighted the growing divide between Musk and his daughter. While Musk continues to make headlines for his businesses and social media controversies, Ms. Wilson has firmly distanced herself, using her platform to subtly but pointedly critique her estranged father.

Courtesy: The Daily Show

References

• ^ Musk remained on the board and served as an advisor.^[72][73]
• ^ SpaceX received nearly $900 million in Federal Communications Commission subsidies for Starlink.^[103][104]
• ^ Musk stated he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share, an alleged reference to marijuana.^[152] Members of Tesla’s board and rapper Azealia Banks alleged that Musk may have been under the influence of recreational drugs when he wrote the tweet.^[153][154]
• ^ He did not file the necessary SEC paperwork within 10 days of his stake passing 5%, a violation of US securities laws.^[207]
• ^ Jump up to:^a b The “Roman salute” is a gesture which was used by Italian Fascists, then adopted by the Nazis. It is not believed to have been used by ancient Romans.
• Citations
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Alexander, Sophie; Hull, Dana (June 21, 2024). “Elon Wants YOU to Have More Babies”. Bloomberg News. Retrieved June 21, 2024.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Eligon, John; Chutel, Lynsey (May 5, 2022). “Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 11, 2022. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 25, 31.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Hall, Dana (April 11, 2014). “Rocket Man: The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk”. The Mercury News. Archived from the original on April 14, 2014. Retrieved April 14, 2014.
• ^ Elliott, Hannah (March 26, 2012). “At Home With Elon Musk: The (Soon-to-Be) Bachelor Billionaire”. Forbes. Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
• ^ His biography author Ashlee Vance interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network, discussion of his family starts around the 15th minute
• ^ Vargas, Chanel (March 6, 2018). “11 Things to Know About Stunning 69-Year-Old Model Maye Musk”. Town & Country. Archived from the original on March 7, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Usborne, Simon (February 21, 2018). “Meet the Musks: who’s who in Elon’s extended family?”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Isaacson (2023), p. 23.
• ^ Hull, Dana; May, Patrick. “Exploring the otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk”. The Buffalo News. Archived from the original on September 26, 2022. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Friend, Tad (August 17, 2009). “Plugged In”. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on March 8, 2022.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Smith, Adam (June 28, 2021). “50 years of Elon Musk’s huge wealth, from emeralds to SpaceX and Tesla”. The Independent. Archived from the original on November 25, 2021. Retrieved December 20, 2021. teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”
• ^ Lieberman, Hallie. “The Musk of Romance”. Wired. Archived from the original on September 2, 2020. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
• ^ Kay, Grace (September 30, 2023). “Elon Musk’s dad, 77, says he’d have more kids — but only if he could find a woman under 35”. Business Insider. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Hull, Dana; May, Patrick (April 10, 2014). “2014: Rocket Man: The otherworldly ambitions of Elon Musk”. The Mercury News. Archived from the original on September 6, 2016. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
• ^ Crilly, Rob (March 25, 2018). “Elon Musk’s father has baby with step-daughter he has known since she was four”. The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on April 26, 2021.
• ^ Mann, Jyoti (September 11, 2023). “Elon Musk really was telling the truth by saying his father Errol never owned an emerald mine, biographer says”. Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 22, 2023. Retrieved February 22, 2024.
• ^ Crellin, Zac (September 22, 2023). “Elon Musk’s Dad Shares Deadly Secrets of Fabled Emerald Mine”. The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on March 13, 2024. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
• ^ Keating, Joseph C. Jr. (September 1995). “Joshua N Haldeman, DC: the Canadian Years, 1926–1950”. The Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association. PMC 2485067.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 26–30.
• ^ Isaacson (2023), p. 16.
• ^ “Does Elon Musk have PTSD? Biographer Walter Isaacson says the billionaire’s turbulent childhood with an abusive father left him scarred”. Archived from the original on June 15, 2024. Retrieved June 15, 2024.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Strauss, Neil (November 15, 2017). “Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow”. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on August 17, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2017.
• ^ “Hoërskool Bryanston se hoof hartseer oor Elon Musk geboelie is”. Archived from the original on June 28, 2024. Retrieved June 28, 2024.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Isaacson (2023), pp. 2–3.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Bhaimiya, Sawdah. “Errol Musk denies berating his son after an attack at school put Elon Musk in hospital”. Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved December 5, 2023.
• ^ “Elon Musk shares the science fiction book series that inspired him to start SpaceX”. CNBC. February 22, 2020. Archived from the original on November 4, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 38.
• ^ O’Kane, Sean (June 9, 2015). “Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre-teen”. The Verge. Archived from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
• ^ Belfiore (2007), pp. 166–195.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Mak, Aaron (December 4, 2019). “Elon Musk Says ‘Pedo Guy’ Was a Common Insult in His Youth. We Checked With His Schoolmates”. Slate. Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
• ^ Isaacson (2023), p. 26.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Clifford, Catherine (June 12, 2018). “Multi-billionaire Elon Musk: ‘I arrived in North America at 17 with $2,000′”. CNBC. Archived from the original on August 2, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 44. Musk’s opportunity to flee arrived with a change in the law that allowed Maye to pass her Canadian citizenship to her children.
• ^ Junod, Tom (November 15, 2012). “Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will”. Esquire. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2020.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 43–44. What rarely gets mentions is that Musk attended the University of Pretoria for five months before heading off on his grand adventure. … Musk characterized the time at university as just something to do while he awaited his Canadian documentation.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 45. After a 1,900-mile bus ride, he ended up in Swift Current, a town of fifteen thousands people. Musk called a second cousin out of the blue from the bus station and hitched a ride to his house.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 46. Musk spent the next year working a series of odd jobs around Canada. He tended vegetables and shoved out grain bins at a cousin’s farm located in the tiny town of Waldeck. … He inquired about the job with the best wage, which turned out to be a gig cleaning the boiler room of a lumber mill for eighteen dollars an hour.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 46–47. Elon ended up enrolling at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1989.
• ^ Locke, Taylor (December 20, 2019). “Elon Musk’s college pal: This is what ‘differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity'”. CNBC. Archived from the original on December 14, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2021.
• ^ Shoichet, Catherine E. (September 29, 2024). “Elon Musk once described his past immigration status as a ‘gray area'”. CNN. Archived from the original on November 13, 2024. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Vance (2017), p. 368. Musk produced a document for me dated June 22, 2009, that came from Judith Haccou, the director of graduate admissions in the office of the registrar at Stanford University. It read, “As per special request from my colleagues in the School of Engineering, I have searched Stanford’s admission data base and acknowledge that you applied and were admitted to the graduate program in Material Science Engineering in 1995. Since you did not enroll, Stanford is not able to issue you an official certification document.” Musk also had an explanation for the weird timing on his degrees from Penn. “I had a History and an English credit that I agreed with Penn that I would do at Stanford,” he said. “The I put Stanford on deferment. Later, Penn’s requirements changed so that you don’t need the English and History credit. So they awarded me the degree in ’97 when it was clear I was not going to go to grad school, and their requirement was no longer there.”
• ^ Kasprak, Alex (December 21, 2022). “Does Elon Musk Have an Undergraduate Degree in Physics?”. Snopes. Archived from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Vance (2017), Appendix 1. I called Penn’s registrar and verified these findings. Copies of Musk’s records show that he received a dual degree in economics and physics in May 1997. O’Reilly also subpoenaed the registrar’s office at Stanford to verify Musk’s admittance in 1995 for his doctorate work in physics. “Based on the information you provided, we are unable to locate a record in our office for Elon Musk,” wrote the director of graduate admissions.
• ^ Meisenzahl, Elizabeth. “SpaceX, founded by Penn graduate Elon Musk, launches U.S. astronauts into space”. The Daily Pennsylvanian. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
• ^ McCray, Patrick W. (June 11, 2012). “A pioneer in space and on Earth”. CNN. Archived from the original on November 28, 2022. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Hern, Alex (February 9, 2018). “Elon Musk: the real-life Iron Man”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 11, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
• ^ “How internships helped Elon Musk figure out his future”. CNBC. July 16, 2018. Archived from the original on December 28, 2019. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
• ^ Soni, Jimmi (February 22, 2022). “The little-known story about Elon Musk’s first post-grad internship”. Fortune. Archived from the original on March 7, 2022.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Sacchetti, Maria; Siddiqui, Faiz; Miroff, Nick (October 26, 2024). “Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders’, launched his career working illegally”. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 26, 2024.
• ^ Maidment, Paul (March 15, 2016). “7 college dropouts who made millions”. CNBC. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
• ^ Faiz Siddiqui; Nick Miroff. “Elon Musk claims student visa permitted him to work in U.S.” The Washington Post.
• ^ Delevett, Peter; Hull, Dana (August 13, 2012). “Greg Kouri, early investor in PayPal, dies in New York”. The Mercury News. Archived from the original on October 6, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
• ^ Huddleston, Tom Jr. (June 19, 2018). “How Elon Musk founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal”. CNBC. Archived from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
• ^ Chafkin, Max (December 1, 2007). “Entrepreneur of the Year, 2007: Elon Musk”. Inc. Archived from the original on December 28, 2007. Retrieved February 22, 2022.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b c Huddleston, Tom Jr. (June 19, 2018). “Elon Musk slept on his office couch and ‘showered at the YMCA’ while starting his first company”. CNBC. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
• ^ Novak, Matt (April 1, 2024). “Watch Elon Musk Talk About Being an ‘Illegal Immigrant’ in Video From 2013”. Gizmodo. Archived from the original on September 29, 2024. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
• ^ Shoichet, Catherine E. (September 29, 2024). “Elon Musk once described his past immigration status as a ‘gray area'”. CNN. Archived from the original on September 29, 2024. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
• ^ Kidder (2013), pp. 224–228.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 67.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 14.
• ^ Junnarkar, Sandeep (February 16, 1999). “Compaq buys Zip2”. CNET. Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Retrieved December 13, 2020.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 109.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Isaacson, Walter (2023). Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-76142-261-4.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 78.
• ^ Vance (2017), p. 84.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Vance (2017), p. 86.
• ^ Jackson (2004), pp. 40, 69, 130, 163.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 85–86.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 85–87.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 87–88.
• ^ “The PayPal Mafia”. Fortune. Archived from the original on May 23, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2015.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Vance (2017), p. 89.
• ^ Odell, Mark (September 30, 2014). “Timeline: The rise of PayPal”. Financial Times. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
• ^ “SEC 10-K”. PayPal. December 31, 2001. Archived from the original on August 25, 2020.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 116.
• ^ Huang, Echo. “Elon Musk bought a web domain worth millions with ‘sentimental value’ to him”. Quartz. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
• ^ Statt, Nick (July 10, 2017). “Elon Musk now owns X.com, the defunct domain of his second startup”. The Verge. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
• ^ Kleinman, Zoe (October 5, 2022). “Elon Musk, Twitter and the mysterious X app”. BBC News. Archived from the original on October 21, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
• ^ Vance (2017), pp. 99, 102–103.
• ^ Kenneth Chang (May 30, 2020). “Entrepreneur Tries His Midas Touch in Space, New York Times”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 2, 2020.
• ^ Jump up to:^a b Vance, Ashlee (May 14, 2015). “Elon Musk’s space dream almost killed Tesla”. Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on February 23, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
• ^ Wayne, Leslie (February 5, 2006). “A Bold Plan to Go Where Men Have Gone Before”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
• ^ California Business Search (C2414622 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp), archived from the original on February 23, 2018, retrie