Elon Musk Says Transgender Daughter Vivian Was “Killed” by “Woke Mind Virus”
Elon Musk is getting candid about his relationship with his estranged daughter.
The Tesla CEO shared that 20-year-old Vivian Jenna Wilson—whom he shares with ex-wife Justine Wilson—was “killed” in his eyes by “the woke mind virus” by seeking gender-affirming care after coming out as transgender.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents,” Elon told Daily Wire in an interview published July 23. “This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion.”
The SpaceX founder claimed he only agreed to sign the papers that gave Vivian permission to undergo gender-affirming care because he was told she “might commit suicide” if he didn’t.
“I was tricked into doing this,” Elon continued. “I lost my son, essentially.”
Noting that the act of referring to a transgender person by their old name is called “deadnaming,” he added, “The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead.”
And Elon—who also shares late son Nevada Alexander Musk, Vivian’s twin brother Griffin Musk, and 16-year-old triplets Kai Musk, Saxon Musk and Damian Musk with Justine—doesn’t want to experience that loss again. As he explained, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress.”
Vivian cut ties with Elon in 2022 after filing a petition to change her name due to her gender identity and her severed relationship with the patriarch.
Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times
“I no longer live with,” Vivian wrote in court documents obtained by E! News at the time, “or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
In addition to his children with Justine, Elon also shares kids X Æ A-Xii, 4, Exa Dark Sideræl, 2, and Techno Mechanicus, whose birth was confirmed in 2023, with ex Grimes, as well as three kids—2-year-old twins Strider and Azure and a third baby welcomed in March—with partner Shivon Zilis.
And while he’s no longer in contact with Vivian, the 53-year-old previously shared that he has strong bonds with his other kids.
“I have very good relationships with all the others,” Elon told Financial Times in an interview published June 23. “Can’t win them all.”
E! News has reached out to Justine for comment but hasn’t heard back.
Keep reading for a full breakdown of Musk’s complicated family tree.
Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Maye Musk (Mom)
Maye was born in Saskatchewan, Canada and emigrated with her parents to Pretoria, South Africa in 1950, when she was 7. She and Elon’s father, Errol Musk, split in 1979.
After Elon moved to Canada at age 17, Maye obtained Canadian citizenship by birthright and moved there too. There, she established a dietician practice and became President of the Consulting Dieticians of Canada. She also worked as a model.
In 2019, after Elon sold his company Zip2 for more than $300 million, he bought his mom an apartment in New York City, where she lived for 13 years and continued her modeling career after being signed to the IMG Models agency.
“I brought my children up like my parents brought us up when we were young: to be independent, kind, honest, considerate and polite,” Maye wrote in an essay for CNBC. “I taught them the importance of working hard and doing good things.”
Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon/Getty Images
Errol Musk (Dad)
Elon’s father is an engineer and like Elon, was born in South Africa.
Though Errol said in a 2015 Forbes interview that he used to often take his kids on trips overseas—“Their mother and I split up when they were quite young and the kids stayed with me. I took them all over the world.”—his relationship with Elon isn’t picture perfect.In an emotional 2017 Rolling Stone interview, Elon criticized his father and talked about his upbringing, saying that after his parents split, he moved in with his dad, which, he said, “was not a good idea.”
However, Errol told Rolling Stone, “I love my children and would readily do whatever for them.”
Following his divorce from Maye, Errol married Heide, whose daughter Jana Bezuidenhout was 4 years old at the time. Errol and Heide went on to have two daughters together before they, too, broke up.
Years later, Jana reached out to Errol following a breakup of her own. “We were lonely, lost people,” Errol explained in a 2018 interview with The Sunday Times. “One thing led to another—you can call it God’s plan or nature’s plan.”
Either way, the duo became romantic and welcomed son Elliott in 2017 and then a baby girl in 2019. As Errol put it to The Sun, “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce. If I could have another child I would. I can’t see any reason not to.”
Kimbal Musk & Tosca Musk (Siblings)
Kimbal, born in 1972, is a restauranteur and the founder of The Kitchen, a collective of five restaurants that source directly from local farmers. He also runs a non-profit, Big-Green, that has built 200 learning gardens in schools across the U.S., the outlet said.
Tosca, born in 1974, is a filmmaker. In 2017, she founded Passionflix, a female-focused streaming service that targets the billion-dollar romance novel industry.
Twitter / Justine Musk
Justine Wilson (Ex-Wife)
Elon and Canadian-born Justine, his college sweetheart from Queen’s University in Ontario, married in 2000. In a 2010 article she penned for Marie Claire, titled I Was a Starter Wife: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce, Justine said that while dancing at their wedding reception, Elon told her, “I am the alpha in this marriage.”
“I shrugged it off,” Wilson wrote, “just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious.”
The two faced an unthinkable tragedy when their baby boy Nevada Alexander died at 10 weeks from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). “Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing,” Justine wrote in her article.
The couple pursued IVF to conceive again and went on to welcome five more kids: Twins Vivian and Griffin and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian.
In 2008, Elon filed for divorce.
Twitter / Elon Musk
Vivian Wilson; Griffin, Kai, Damian & Saxon Musk (Kids)
In a July 2022 snap, Elon revealed he took his oldest sons to meet Pope Francis. While he was honored to meet the head of the Catholic church, Elon added of his ‘fit, “My suit is tragic.”
That same year, Elon’s daughter Vivian filed a petition to change her full name in accordance with her new gender identity, writing, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Talulah Riley (Ex-Wife)
Elon and Talulah—who starred on HBO’s Westworld—married in 2010. “It all happened very fast,” she told CBS News. “We were engaged after, I think, two weeks of knowing each other.”
The two divorced in 2012, then remarried a year later before divorcing again in 2016. In June 2024, she wed Love Actually alum Thomas Brodie-Sangster.
Amber Heard (Ex-Girlfriend)
Elon and Amber went public with their romance in early 2017, a year after she filed for divorce from Johnny Depp and Elon ended his (second) marriage to Talulah. Though their relationship didn’t last long.
“I just broke up with my girlfriend,” Elon told Rolling Stone at the time. “I was really in love, and it hurt bad…Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think.”
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Grimes (Ex-Girlfriend)
Elon and the singer dated on-and-off for four years, starting in 2018. In September 2021, Elon told Page Six that he and Grimes “are, I’d say, probably semi-separated,” adding, “It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She’s staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room.”
However, in March 2022, she told Vanity Fair that they “live in separate houses” and are “best friends.”
She later tweeted, “Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article haha, but he’s my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now.”
When news broke in September 2023 that the couple share three children together, the “Crystal Ball” singer confirmed that, yes, their most recent addition Techno Mechanicus had joined son X Æ A-12, 3, and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME
X Æ A-Xii Musk (Son)
In 2020, Elon and Grimes welcomed their first child together, a son. They soon modified the spelling of his name in order to meet California’s legal guidelines, which only permit letters from the English alphabet. Switching over to roman numerals, the parents agreed to spell his name, X Æ A-Xii.
“X, the unknown variable,” Grimes explained on Twitter. “Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence) A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent.”
Grimes continued, “A=Archangel, my favorite song” adding a rat and sword emoji. “Metal rat.”
Dia Dipasupil/WireImage
Exa Dark Sideræl & Techno Mechanicus Musk (Kids)
In her 2022 Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed she and Elon privately welcomed a baby girl via surrogacy.
“Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second),” she said. “Dark, meanwhile, is the unknown. People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.'”
Sideræl—pronounced “sigh-deer-ee-el”—is, according to mom, “the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time,” and a nod to her favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who “chooses to abdicate the ring.”
A year later, the New York Times‘ review of Walter Isaacson‘s biography Elon Musk confirmed that Elon and Grimes share three children. The on-again, off-again couple at one point welcomed a child named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, a report Grimes confirmed soon after.
“I wish I could show u how cute little Techno is,” she wrote on X, “but my priority rn is keeping my babies out of the public eye, Plz respect that at this time.”
X / Shivon Zilis
Strider & Azure Musk (Kids)
In 2022, Business Insider published court documents that stated Elon welcomed twins in November 2021 with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. The babies were born in Austin, Texas, where he lives.
He also seemingly weighed in on the report on X, writing, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
“Mark my words,” he added, “they are sadly true.”
In September 2023, a TIME magazine cover story revealed that their twins were named Strider and Azure.
Twitter/Getty Images
Baby No. 12
In 2024, Elon and Zilis welcomed their third baby together. The billionaire confirmed the news in June 2024, telling Page Six, “All our friends and family know,” adding, “Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.'”
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