Almost no one had a less normal reaction to Taylor Swift’s surprise endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night than Trump supporter Elon Musk, who quickly announced on X that he would impregnate the pop star and “guard your cats with my life.”
The bizarre and crass tweet — a reference to the fact that Swift signed her endorsement “Childless Cat Lady” as a rebuttal to sexist comments made by Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance — drew immediate condemnation from users of Musk’s own social media platform, with many pointing out that the right-wing billionaire had achieved new levels of “divorced” posting.
But perhaps no criticism of the X post hits harder than the words of one of Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who took to Threads to share her thoughts on the dangerous ideology behind Musk’s grotesque attempt at a joke.
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After Tuesday night’s presidential debate was immediately followed by Swift’s internet-breaking Instagram post announcing her support for the Harris-Walz ticket, Wilson shared that the “timing for the Taylor Swift endorsement could not have been better.” But she quickly followed that observation with commentary on her father’s unsettling tweet, writing “Heinous incel nonsense is in fact heinous incel nonsense.”
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“It’s disgusting, it’s belittling and incredibly sexist,” Wilson continued. “You deserve better.”
Wilson, who became estranged from her father due to her transition, has become increasingly vocal this year following Musk’s transphobic rant about her in a July episode of Jordan Peterson’s podcast. During that appearance, Musk said that his child had been “killed by the woke mind virus,” to which the 20-year-old Wilson later replied, “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.” Since then, she has adopted a more public posture, giving her first interview to NBC News in late July and posting criticisms of Musk on Threads, Meta’s competitor to X.
Musk, who has at least 12 children, has cozied up to right-wing influencers and politicians in recent years, especially in the wake of his purchase of Twitter, now X. On July 13, following an assassination attempt on Trump, Musk publicly announced he was endorsing the Republican presidential candidate and has since jockeyed for a position in a second Trump administration.
In a particularly striking bit of contrast, Swift’s endorsement of Harris cited her support for “a woman’s right to her own body” only for Musk to make a disturbing comment about impregnating her minutes later. Polling indicates that the Trump-Vance ticket is underwater with American women — a gap not helped by Vance’s now-viral 2021 comments that the country was controlled by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” Swift, who was holding her cat Benjamin Button in her Instagram endorsement, certainly needs no help “guarding” any of her felines.
In her series of Threads posts, Wilson wrote that she was looking forward to Swift fans voting in the upcoming election. On Wednesday afternoon, NPR’s Elena Moore reported that vote.gov had already received more than 300,000 visitors from the pop star’s Instagram post.
“Can’t wait to see the Swifties at the polls!” Wilson said. “Vote blue.”
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