Ashley St. Clair, the anti-trans author and alleged mother to one of Elon Musk’s many children, sold her Tesla in recent days, according to video posted to the Daily Mail. Why? Apparently Musk isn’t paying enough money in child support. But the Tesla CEO says he’s giving St. Clair plenty of money.
“I’m selling because I need to make up for the 60% cut that Elon made to our son’s child support,” St. Clair says in the Daily Mail video.
Asked why she thought Musk would do that and whether it was vindictive, St. Clair replied that it was his “modus operandi when women speak out.” The author, most famous for an anti-trans children’s book she wrote, said to “check the stocks,” a reference to Tesla’s plunging stock price, and “I’m not the only one who is cleaning up after his messes.”
The video of St. Clair in front of her Tesla was posted to X by far-right influencer Laura Loomer on Monday, where she referred to St. Clair as a “gold digger and professional gaslighter.” Loomer wrote that St. Clair was “caught on camera” outside of her “ritzy Manhattan condo,” and claimed that Musk (who Loomer called her “sugar daddy), had paid for both the car and her condo. Loomer also claimed St. Clair “has hired anti-Trump lawyers to sue Elon Musk.”
Gizmodo has no inside knowledge on whether any of that is true, but it’s necessary to understand the context of the shitshow conversation that would follow on the billionaire’s own social media platform. Musk replied that he doesn’t actually know if the child is his, but sort of claimed he wanted to know, even without a court-ordered paternity test. The billionaire also said he was giving St. Clair plenty of money.
“I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out. No court order is needed. Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year,” Musk wrote.
St. Clair replied that she was being punished for “disobedience,” perhaps referring to the publicity she received after making it known that she had a child with Musk.
“Elon, we asked you to confirm paternity through a test before our child (who you named) was even born. You refused,” St. Clair wrote on X. “And you weren’t sending *me* money, you were sending support for your child that you thought was necessary… until you withdrew most of it to maintain control and punish me for ‘disobedience.’ But you’re really only punishing your son.”
St. Clair went on to accuse Musk of trying to silence her.
“It’s ironic that your last effort in court was to try to gag me while you use a social media channel you literally own to distribute derogatory messages about me and our child to the entire world,” St. Clair continued. “It’s all about control with you, and everyone can see it. America needs you to grow up, you petulant man-child.”
Why does any of this matter outside of family court? Perhaps it doesn’t in the grand scheme of things. But it does seem like an odd situation for a man whose worldview is so defined by having as many children as possible. According to Forbes, Musk is reportedly the wealthiest person on the planet, worth about $340 billion. And he wields enormous power, not just through his private companies like Tesla and SpaceX, but by dismantling the federal government, as he’s currently doing now with DOGE.
It’s with that gigantic platform and incredible amount of power that Musk is advancing an agenda based on people having as many kids as possible. The billionaire oligarch believes that everyone should just procreate frequently, circumstances be damned, but doesn’t seem to care about the conservative principle behind the traditional Republican idea of having kids: Supporting them financially and emotionally.
St. Clair has made Musk out to be a deadbeat father. And, again, it’s hard for an outsider to judge something like that. But it doesn’t seem to be in dispute that Musk’s many children (14 that we know of) don’t really get the attention they deserve. The Tesla CEO is frequently seen in public with his kid X, who he had with the musician Grimes, but there are many other children who don’t seem to get the same attention. And that’s to say nothing of Musk’s estrangement from his trans daughter Vivian, who says he wasn’t around much. Musk has publicly referred to her as “dead,” a brutally cruel thing to say about one of your own children just because they came out as trans.
It’s one thing to have as many kids as you can. It’s an entirely different thing to actually be a good father to those kids. And Ms. St. Clair doesn’t seem to think that’s happening right now with their son. Well, alleged son.
