Elon Musk’s 20-year-old trans daughter Vivian says her dad is a “pathetic man-child” who “definitely” gave a Nazi salute on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Her fiery comments came in a lengthy sit-down with Teen Vogue, where she revealed Musk has not spoken to her in five years—a status quo she appears content with.
“I don’t give a f--- about him,” she told Teen Vogue. “I really don’t. It’s annoying that people associate me with him. I just don’t have any room to care anymore.”
Vivian, who says she is financially independent from the world’s richest man, said Musk does not take up a lot of space in her day-to-day life. She currently lives in Tokyo, where she is studying languages to become a translator, and only keeps up with her dad by what comes across her social media feeds on Threads or Bluesky, where she has amassed over 200,000 followers across the platforms.
“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 said.
One of those times came in the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration—when Musk gave an evocative gesture that resembled a Nazi salute during a rally of Trump supporters. Musk swears the gesture was him giving his heart out to the crowd. Vivian disagrees.
“The Nazi salute s--t was insane,” she told Teen Vogue this month. “Honey, we’re going to call a fig a fig, and we’re going to call a Nazi salute what it was. That s--t was definitely a Nazi salute.”
Musk, a 53-year-old who has fathered 14 children with four women, has been an unabashed MAGA man since last summer, wielding power and influence in Republican politics that appears to be rivaled only by the president himself.
This has placed Musk, a South African native worth $326 billion according to Forbes, in a position to throw the full political weight of the MAGA movement and his billions at anyone who opposes him or the president.
Vivian says she still does not fear her father at all, however. She described him as a “pathetic man-child” who, like other conservatives who try to be funny online, has the “charisma of a soaking bathrobe.”
“Why would I feel scared of him? Ohhh, he has so much power. Nah, nah, nah. I don’t give a f---,” she lamented to Teen Vogue. “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. OK. Congratulations.”
Vivian began grabbing headlines in 2022, when she filed a petition to have her gender and name legally changed in California to Vivian Jenna Wilson—severing ties with her dad’s surname and taking on the name of her mother, Justine, who was married to Musk for eight years. A year later, a biography about Musk—which deadnamed Vivian or used her middle name—described the then-teenager as supporting “radical Marxism.”
Vivian told Teen Vogue her political beliefs were misconstrued and that she was “essentially defamed”—though she admits her politics are nowhere near her father’s.
“I’m a leftist, not a Marxist,” she said. “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 free health care. I believe food, shelter, and water are human rights. I believe that wealth inequality is one of the biggest problems of the United States right now, especially of our generation.”
She explained she is passionate about workers being “fairly compensated for the work that they do” because she, growing up the daughter of a multi-billionaire in Los Angeles, has seen wealth inequality at its extreme.
“I don’t feel like wealth should be hoarded by these mega-billionaires who are the top 1 percent, who only have their own interests at heart,” she said. “I’ve met some of these billionaires—they’re not very good people. I don’t think any of them are.”
