Maybe Melania Trump was the one holding the camera.
That’s one way to explain the absence of Donald Trump’s wife from a curious new election-night Trump family photo, posted to X by Donald Trump Jr.’s daughter Kai.
But if Melania Trump is missing from the celebratory group photo, which Kai Trump captioned “The whole squad,” there’s a new addition to the family display: Elon Musk.
There’s a lot to unpack from this family photo, which prominently features the world’s richest man, standing with the president-elect’s offspring and their partners and their children. Musk stands next to Lara Trump, in front of Eric Trump, and to the left of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The X owner, who reportedly pumped some $130 million into Trump’s campaign, also holds one of his 11 children, his adored 4-year-old son X-AE-A12.
“All his bouncing paid off,” the Daily Beast said about Musk’s inclusion in the Trump family photo, close to a month after the billionaire Space X founder literally bounced up and down on stage at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In the photo, the patriarch himself actually stands off from the center, next to his son, Barron Trump, 17-year-old Kai and four of his other grandchildren.
Melania Trump’s absence from this photo is sure to fuel conversation in some social media corners about the health of the Trump marriage and her possible plans to only be a part-time first lady in her husband’s second term. Then again, the former model made a rare appearance during the 2024 election cycle to join her husband on stage at his election-night victory announcement at the West Palm Beach Convention Center.
But also missing from this photo: Trump Jr.’s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle. She and Trump Jr. were the subject of reports in the usually pro-Trump Daily Mail that allege he had a “dalliance” with a Palm Beach socialite, though NewsNation recently reported that he and Guilfoyle’s relationship is “doing fine.” It’s also possible that Guilfoyle sat out this group photo in favor of Trump Jr.’s ex-wife Vanessa, who stands with Kai and their other children. Guilfoyle moreover was on stage with Trump Jr. at the convention center.
Meanwhile, Musk cracks a smile as he stands with the Trump family members, with their “squad” photo pointing to various Trump family configurations over the years. Musk certainly has a lot to smile about, as the Daily Beast and other publications pointed out. His investment in Trump’s candidacy paid off, with his own Tesla share surging 15% after election night and adding some $15 billion to his fortune. Musk also might be looking forward to an influential role in Trump’s administration, as a so-called “secretary of cost-cutting,” as Trump himself put it.
But with the Trumps, Musk also may have found a sense of family that has eluded him in certain ways.
Like his presidential friend, Musk has been married more than once and fathered children by three different women. In Musk’s case, he has 11 children. But he’s currently locked in a custody battle with one of those mothers, Claire Boucher, otherwise known as the musician Grimes. She’s the mother of X-AE-A12 and two other children. Musk also went through some relationship drama with Grimes when she learned, after the fact, that he had donated sperm to another of his children’s mothers, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, the New York Times reported.
Musk also is notoriously estranged from at least one of his older children — his 20-year-old daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson. Musk has directed some of his transphobic remarks against his own daughter, who is transgender. In an interview over the summer, Musk said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Wilson responded on Threads by saying that her father is “not a family man,” but “a serial adulterer.” On Threads Wednesday, Wilson also announced that she’s leaving the United States following Trump’s victory, the Daily Beast reported. She’s concerned about the hostility to transgender people that she’s seen expressed by her father and by Trump and his MAGA supporters.
“I don’t see my future being in the United States,” Wilson announced. “Even if he’s only in office for 4 years, even if the anti-trans regulations magically don’t happen, the people who willingly voted this in are not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Wilson’s denunciation of her father’s new presidential friend comes as her father is reportedly building an “unusual family compound” in an upscale residential area of Austin, Texas. The New York Times reported last month that Musk reportedly hopes one day that all 11 of his children and their mothers can live there or at least stop by.
According to the New York Times, the property appears to reflect Musk’s pronatalist ambitions. Pronatalists, from both the Christian right and Silicon Valley, believe that people should have as many children as possible, although they differ on the means of reproduction.
Eschewing traditional marriage, Musk has reportedly offered to donate his sperm to various women for IVF purposes. Musk wants to keep fathering children and to contribute to the world’s population growth, and he’d like to make space for his offspring to live together and be a part of one another’s lives.
Unfortunately for Musk, not everyone is on board with his plans. In the months before Tuesday’s election, Wilson publicly blasted her father for his pronatalist “birth rate stuff.” Wilson said she wouldn’t touch that “weird… breeder (expletive) with a 10-foot pole.” Grimes also has moved away from Austin and is steering “clear” of the compound amid her custody battle.
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