Elon Musk’s estranged daughter has launched a new broadside on him as a “buffoon”—and slammed him for claiming her decision to transition explains his political journey to the right.
Vivian Wilson, 20, appeared on left-wing streamer Hasan Piker’s Twitch stream to speak unguardedly about the Tesla, X and SpaceX billionaire who is now Donald Trump’s most high-profile political ally.
The appearance to an audience of the perpetually online Teen Vogue and a series of criticisms on social media of the father of 14—including the revelation that she has now learned three times from the internet about gaining a new sibling.
In the interview with Piker, who has both gained popularity among young progressives and been accused of anti-semitism, Wilson mixed anecdotes about her childhood and her passions (languages—she’s currently studying Japanese in Japan) with extraordinary allegations about her father.
She called Musk an “insecure buffoon” and a narcissist, adding that some people “deserve to feel impostor syndrome.”
In response to a question from Piker’s followers about how much Musk actually works on any given day, she said, “Most of the time I saw him working he was just yelling at employees in the car while we watched, horrified, like viscerally screaming.” Last year, eight former SpaceX employees filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and retaliation, arguing that Musk “runs his company in the dark ages.”
She also pushed back on the popular conception of Musk in the 2000s and early 2010s as a liberal darling, thanks to his work with Tesla. She argued that Musk was “never on the left” and has been right-wing since “at least 2016.” In October 2015, he publicly stated that Trump successfully winning the Republican nomination would be “embarrassing.”
In addition, Wilson rejected any suggestion that his right-wing pivot had anything to do with her, telling Piker, “I cannot take credit for him becoming a f---ing loon… I am not the reason he’s a f---ing fascist." Musk has said of his daughter’s transition that he lost his son to the “woke mind virus” and that his support for Trump was an attempt to fight back against it.
But perhaps one of her most interesting assertions was that Mars colonization, one of SpaceX’s planned objectives, is simply not happening. She told Piker, “It’s not happening, people… It’s a marketing scheme that everyone somehow fell for despite being debunked by a f---ing Google search.”
Sending humans to live on Mars has been a dream of Musk’s for over two decades. The billionaire has been active in the Mars Society, a non-profit that advocates for human colonization of Mars, since at least 2001.
Since his founding of SpaceX, one of the company’s broader goals is to send humanity to Mars in an effort to ensure our species’ survival. Earlier this month, Musk announced that the next-generation Starship spacecraft will leave for Mars at the end of 2026, carrying humanoid robot Optimus on board.
In his announcement on X, he added that if those landings are successful, human landings on Mars may start as early as 2029, “although 2031 is more likely.”
Musk’s plan for Mars colonization has attracted significant criticism, with many, including former U.S. President Barack Obama, arguing that humanity should prioritize protecting Earth before colonizing other planets, while Britain’s chief astrophysicist Lord Martin Rees described Musk’s dream as a “dangerous delusion.”
In conversation with famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Rees argued that “Mars has a hostile environment. The idea of Elon Musk to have a million people settle on Mars is a dangerous delusion.”
He continued, “Living on Mars is no better than living on the South Pole or the tip of Mount Everest.” Tyson concurred, arguing that, “If you want to call Mars home, you need to terraform Mars, turn it into Earth,” concluding that, “It is so much easier to make Earth return to Earth again rather than terraforming Mars.”
Clearly, Wilson—Musk’s eldest daughter with ex-wife Justine—is similarly skeptical of her father’s ambitions. Talking to Piker about Musk’s public image, she quipped, “It turns out if you lie and people believe it, people will think you’re f---ing Tony Stark.”
