Daniel Oberhaus // Creative Commons

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On Sunday, May 31—the day before Pride Month—a Twitter user posted a photo from Vivian Jenna Wilson’s new Savage X Fenty Pride campaign alongside a sweeping claim: that were it not for Vivian, Musk would have never purchased Twitter, never gotten involved in politics, and Kamala Harris would be president. The notion that Musk’s Twitter acquisition was connected to his daughter’s transition has been the subject of speculation for years, bolstered by leaked text messages from the Delaware court filings that linked his purchase directly to the suspension of a transphobic account, and by his own biographer’s reporting that his “anti-woke sentiments” were “partly triggered” by Wilson’s transition. But Musk had never confirmed it in his own words. This time, he replied with a single word: “True”—seemingly confirming what the court filings, the Isaacson biography, and Musk’s own public statements had long suggested: that the $44 billion purchase of Twitter was driven, at least in significant part, by his reaction to his daughter’s transition and the platform’s treatment of anti-trans content.

“We should never forget that if not for Vivian, Elon Musk never would have gotten involved, never would have purchased Twitter, Kamala Harris would be President and the Left-wing would have total instrumental control over the construction of Skynet,” read the post by Twitter user Syd Steyerhart, in response to Vivian’s photo and news about her campaign for Rihanna’s lingerie brand. “True,” Musk responded.

Then, today, he doubled down, writing that Vivian “was murdered by the woke mind virus, now it will die.”

Twitter post

The exchange is striking, but it is not a revelation so much as a confirmation. Evidence that Musk’s purchase of Twitter was substantially influenced by transgender people has been accumulating for years. In March 2022, Twitter suspended the Babylon Bee, a right-wing satire account, for posting a headline naming U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine—a transgender woman—its “Man of the Year.” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon confirmed that Musk called him directly to verify the suspension and “even mused on that call that he might need to buy Twitter.”

Days later, text messages released as part of the Delaware Chancery Court litigation over Musk’s attempted withdrawal from the deal show his ex-wife Talulah Riley texting him: “Can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please!? America is going INSANE. The Babylon Bee got suspension is crazy.” Riley went further: “Or can you buy Twitter and make it radically free-speech? I honestly think social media is the scourge of modern life… But it’s very easy to exploit and is being used by radicals for social engineering on a massive scale. And this shit is infecting the world. Please do do something to fight woke-ism. I will do anything to help!” Musk replied: “Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech.” Just weeks later, he made his $44 billion offer to buy the company outright.

And in an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography published in the Wall Street Journal, the biographer drew the line directly from Musk’s daughter to the acquisition: “Musk’s anti-woke sentiments were partly triggered by the decision of his oldest child, [Vivian], then 16, to transition.” Isaacson continued: “Twitter, he felt, had become infected by a similar mindset that suppressed right-wing and anti-establishment voices.”

Musk has since used the platform he purchased to wage a sustained campaign against transgender people. He has made Twitter hostile for transgender journalists and activists, going as far as digitally labeling the term “cisgender”—simply a term for someone who is not transgender, derived from a Latin prefix that has existed since Roman times as the opposite of “trans”—a slur. He removed Twitter’s longstanding policy banning the deliberate misgendering and deadnaming of transgender users, protections that had been in place since 2018. On the first day of Pride Month 2023, he personally overruled his own content moderation team to promote “What Is a Woman?,” the Daily Wire’s anti-trans documentary, which went on to receive over a hundred million views on the platform with his amplification. He has amplified fringe anti-trans groups like the American College of Pediatricians—a small, SPLC-designated hate group often confused with the legitimate American Academy of Pediatrics—lending them an audience of millions. He also has publicly stated he would lobby to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors on the platform.

As for his trans daughter Vivian, she has had sharp words for her father before. The last time Musk invoked her name to justify his crusade against transgender people—in a July 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson in which he claimed she had been “killed by the woke mind virus” and that he had been “tricked” into allowing her to transition—Wilson fired back on Threads, calling his account of her childhood “entirely fake” and noting that “he doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.” Her advice for the richest man in the world? “Go touch some f—ing grass.”

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