Ten or fifteen years ago, Elon Musk seemed like a milquetoast liberal. He chummed around with Barack Obama, talked about the need to move away from fossil fuels, and accepted huge amounts of government assistance.

But over the past few years, he's taken a rightward turn so extreme that it gives a sense of whiplash. Now he's more likely to make headlines for supporting Donald Trump, insulting the intelligence of minorities, and — with what sometimes feels like a particular glee — mocking the existence of transgender people.

What changed? Did he always hold ugly and dehumanizing beliefs, but concealed them while he was building his business empire at Tesla and SpaceX? Did his growing wealth alienate him from the experiences of ordinary people? Or did his many divorces and interpersonal feuds leave him lonely, like so many other angry men who find solace in paranoid worldviews?

The truth is almost certainly some dark combination. But if one incident seems to have spurred Musk's shift toward bizarre and regressive outbursts, it seems to have been his unwillingness to accept his daughter coming out as transgender — a move many parents would have responded to with love and support, but which seems to have triggered some of Musk's most appalling behavior yet.

In a new interview with NBC News, the daughter — age 20, who goes by Vivian Jenna Wilson — says that she always acted feminine, causing Musk to lash out even when she was a 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," she told the network. "It was cruel."

The public first heard of Wilson's transition back in 2022, when she filed legal documents to change her name to go with her gender identity.

There were already clues that her relationship with Musk had soured, with Wilson writing in the paperwork that "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."

In the new NBC interview, Wilson explains why.

When she had previously approached her father at age 16 to sign paperwork that would allow her to start transitioning — first using puberty blockers and later hormone replacement therapy — he was unsupportive.

"I was trying to do this for months, but he said I had to go meet with him in person," she said. "At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other." (She now lives with her mother, Musk's former wife Justine, who she characterized as "very supportive.")

Musk read the forms over twice, Wilson recalled — once with her and again without her — but eventually signed them, fully understanding the treatment he was allowing her to undergo.

"He was not by any means tricked," Wilson told NBC. "He knew the full side effects."

That's a relevant detail, because last week Musk appeared in a video interview in which he claimed that he didn't realize what he was signing.

"I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys," Musk said, refusing to acknowledge Wilson's gender identity. "This was before I had really any understanding of what was going on."

"I lost my son, essentially," Musk said, again refusing to respect his daughter's chosen identity and adding that she had been "killed by the woke mind virus."

In other words, it seems as though Musk's brutish worldview is inextricably wrapped up in his dysfunctional relationship with a child who he bullied, tried to control, and is now attacking publicly in front of his audience of countless millions.

This time, though, she's fighting back. Earlier today she took to social media, skewering her father for his viciousness and absenteeism.

"I want to make one thing absolutely clear," she wrote. "I disowned him, not the other way around."

And now, speaking with NBC, she seems to be sending Musk a message: the people close to him may have a lot to say about his increasingly abhorrent behavior.

"I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go, unchallenged," Wilson told NBC. "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."

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