Elon Musk’s daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson painted a scathing picture of her father in an interview on Thursday, describing the billionaire as a cruel absentee father, who bullied her for appearing queer and feminine, then lied about her medical care as part of his recent turn towards attacking transgender people.
Musk, during a recent interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, misgendered Wilson, used her dead name, and described her coming out as transgender as being “killed by the woke mind virus.”
The comments inspired Wilson, now a 20-year-old college student studying languages, to offer her first public interview to NBC News.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go, unchallenged,” she said. “Which I’m not going to do because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”
The 20-year-old accused Musk of largely being absent from her life despite holding joint custody, and of bullying her for being queer and exhibiting feminine traits, including allegedly urging her to lower her voice as a young child.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” Wilson said. “It was cruel.”
Wilson, the daughter of Musk and his first wife, author Justine Musk, took particular issue with the billionaire’s claim in the Peterson interview that he had been “tricked” into approving gender-affirming medical care for the youth.
“He was not by any means tricked,” Wilson said, describing Musk’s decision to provide parental approval to care that came to include puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. She said her father read over medical documents about the care multiple times.
“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted,” she said in the NBC interview. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.”
In 2022, Wilson filed a petition to change her name in California and said in court documents, she doesn’t “wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Musk, in recent years, has ramped up his criticisms of transgender people and laws designed to protect them.
This month, Musk announced he’s moving SpaceX to Texas over a California ban on schools outing trans kids to their parents.
The Independent has contacted Musk for comment.