Elon Musk made the stunning decision earlier this month to move the headquarters of two more of his companies – X and SpaceX – from California to Texas. He cited a new law in the Golden State that forbids schools from requiring teachers to notify parents if their child changes their gender identity as the “last straw.”
At the time, Musk called the legislation an attack on families and companies, and a new interview between the billionaire and The Daily Wire’s Jordan B. Peterson sheds additional light on just how important this issue is to him. Musk opened up about the ‘gender affirming care’ that led his son to ‘transition’ and explained why he is now determined to “destroy the woke mind virus.”
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Peterson’s Daily Wire colleague Michael Knowles to discuss Musk’s emotional interview and how history will look back at this time.
Musk Speaks
In a live interview that streamed Monday on DailyWire+, Musk opened up about how he was “tricked into” allowing his one his sons to undergo gender affirming care procedures, which he said is “a terrible euphemism” that actually equates to “child mutilation and sterilization.”
MUSK: It happened to one of my older boys, where I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier. This is before I had really any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, and so there was confusion. And, you know, I was told Xavier might commit suicide…
When Peterson interjected that the suicide claim “was a lie from the outset,” the Tesla founder agreed that it was “incredibly evil.” He said he believes it is “very possible for adults to manipulate children who are having an actual identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender,” especially when dealing with “kids who are far below the age of consent.”
He went on to describe how he was misled about the actual implications of the hormonal therapy that was being recommended for his son – who is now 20 years old and identifies as a trans woman named Vivian Jenna Wilson – and shared that he feels like he lost his child.
MUSK: It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs… and so I lost my son essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason… The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.
That changed everything for Musk. “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that,” he added.
‘Woke Mind Virus’
Knowles noted that the term ‘woke mind virus’ comes from Gad Saad and, in his view, represents the “logical conclusion” of what the left believes today. “If you make your politics all about the self, and maximizing individual autonomy, and ‘I can be whatever I want to be even if my biology says otherwise’… then the final conclusion of that is ‘I, a man, can really become a woman.’”
It involves, Knowles said, killing one’s “true identity” in the way Musk described deadnaming. “The transgender ‘transition’ is a kind of ritual suicide – this is why you refer to your old self as a deadname,” he explained. “It’s a kind of a ceremony of rebirth into some new gnostic identity. And it’s terribly harmful because it’s not in accord with reality… but the radical left has smuggled it in under the guise of ‘following the science’ or ‘following the best advice of medical professionals.’”
Except, as Musk noted, he wasn’t told the truth. “You hear Elon say there, ‘They lied to me… and killed my son,’” Knowles noted. “So, a lot of people who might have called themselves liberals – I think Elon would have called himself a liberal – are now seeing the logical conclusion of these premises of this ideology… and we’ve got to reconsider so much that has led us to this moment of heartbreak not just for Elon but for many, many families around the country.”
Megyn said she recently read Maureen Callahan’s new book on the Kennedy family, which includes a chapter about the lobotomy Rosemary Kennedy underwent as a young woman in 1941. “I think that era of medicine is akin to what we’re seeing right now with children, where we are chopping up healthy body parts like they did when they lobotomized otherwise healthy people,” Megyn explained. “And today, it’s in the name of what? Politics, political correctness?”
In her view, radical gender ideology is one of the top issues of the 2024 election. “Kamala Harris is in favor of it. Kamala Harris wants it to continue,” she concluded. “That is among this woman’s many problems.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Knowles by tuning in to episode 846 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.