Last Friday, moments before many Americans were about to log off and enjoy their holiday weekend, the right-wing influencer Ashley St. Clair threw a wrench in those plans by revealing she had a 5-month-old baby and claiming that Elon Musk was the father. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child’s privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so,” she said, including her publicist’s email address for further inquiries.
St. Clair’s announcement that she had allegedly given birth to Musk’s 13th child ignited the MAGA-verse. Musk toadies congratulated her on her new arrival, while other right-wing influencers attacked her for having a child out of wedlock or (possibly) via IVF. Others took the opportunity to dredge up St. Clair’s old social-media posts, attempting to depict her as a gold-digging opportunist intent on entrapping Musk into fathering her child.
So who, exactly, is Ashley St. Clair, and how did she meet Elon Musk (if she even met Musk at all)? Are they romantically involved? How was this baby made, anyway? Perhaps most importantly: Is there anything about this story that does not make you want to take a scalding-hot shower? (Spoiler: no.)
Who is Ashley St. Clair?
St. Clair is a mid-tier right-wing influencer who, before this weekend, was perhaps best known for penning a transphobic children’s book called Elephants Are Not Birds. In the book, a nefarious figure named “Kevin the Culture Vulture” tries to convince the main character, an elephant, to become a bird. (As a children’s-book author, subtlety is clearly not St. Clair’s strong suit.) She’s also a frequent talking head on Fox News, where she has extolled the virtues of pro-natalism, a movement to boost America’s flagging birth rate by encouraging women to have as many babies as possible (and which also happens to be one of Musk’s pet causes).
How did Elon Musk and St. Clair supposedly meet?
In an interview with the New York Post, St. Clair said she met Musk in May 2023, when he slid into her DMs while she was working for the satirical right-wing website the Babylon Bee. After Musk reversed the Babylon Bee’s suspension on X, then known as Twitter (for a transphobic joke about a Biden administration official, natch), St. Clair interviewed him for the Bee, which led to the two striking up a romance, she told the Post.
When she allegedly became pregnant, St. Clair told the Post, Musk bought her an expensive apartment in lower Manhattan and pressured her to keep the pregnancy a “secret.” “I was completely isolated during my pregnancy. Every part of my career and everything I used to do I couldn’t do anymore,” St. Clair said. She claimed she received threats and harassment from Musk superfans who had suspected her baby’s father’s identity, and that she only decided to come forward after a tabloid threatened to out her.
St. Clair did not specify which tabloid threatened to out Musk as her baby’s father, nor did she provide any evidence of Musk’s paternity to the New York Post. “I was told to keep it a secret forever,” she said.
Has Musk responded?
In a statement posted on X, St. Clair’s PR rep Brian Glicklich said, “Ashley & Elon have been privately working towards the creation of an agreement about raising their child for some time.” Yet Musk, who has 12 other children with three different women — including his first wife Justine Wilson, former partner Grimes, and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis — has not publicly responded to St. Clair’s claims. (Neither Musk nor St. Clair responded to a request for comment.)
Seemingly, Musk’s only acknowledgment of the situation was a February 15 reply to a tweet by the notorious far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos, who has spent the past few days resharing St. Clair’s old social-media posts, including lurid photos she reportedly shared of herself when she was just a teenager. “Ashley St Clair plotted for HALF A DECADE to ensnare Elon Musk,” Yiannopoulos tweeted, along with an almost-five-year-old screengrab of St. Clair joking on X about needing to get Musk’s attention for a “marriage proposal.” Musk’s reply? Simply: “Whoa.”
St. Clair then chimed in about this exchange. “Elon, we have been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded,” she replied. “When are you going to reply to us instead of publicly responding to smears from an individual who just posted photos of me in underwear at 15 years old?” Her tweet has since been deleted.
How was this baby made?
People started speculating whether St. Clair’s baby was born via IVF after a screengrab circulated in which St. Clair appeared to claim that she and Musk had enhanced their baby’s genetics via assistive reproductive technologies. (The tweet is not on St. Clair’s X account and appears to be fake.)
Musk reportedly used IVF to conceive many of his children, including five of his kids with his first wife, Justine Wilson. Musk also reportedly used IVF in 2021 to conceive twins Strider and Azure with his employee Zilis, according to court documents obtained in 2022 by Business Insider.
In 2024, Musk confirmed he had a third child with Zilis whose name and gender have not been disclosed. It’s unclear how that child was conceived. Nor is it clear whether two of Musk’s children with ex-partner Grimes, 4-year-old X Æ A-Xii and 2-year-old Techno Mechanicus, were conceived via IVF or non-assistive reproductive technology. (Grimes has confirmed she used a surrogate to have her second child with Musk, a daughter named Exa Siderael, in 2021.)
Regardless of the methodology, Musk has made it abundantly clear that he feels it is part of his life’s mission to have as many children as possible in an effort to repopulate the world. In July 2022, he tweeted he was “doing [his] best to help the underpopulation crisis,” adding that a “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” (Many demographic experts dispute Musk’s contention that flagging population rates pose an imminent threat.)
Musk’s efforts to seemingly impregnate as many women as possible have created something of a rift within the MAGA-verse at large, with many Moral Majority Republicans questioning whether his use of assisted reproductive technology is aligned with conservative pro-life values. Some have also criticized Musk for having so many children out of wedlock. “If you’re worried about the depopulation crisis, your first order of business is to get married. Then, have lots of kids,” the right-wing anti-choice podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey tweeted on February 16. “We don’t just need more babies. We need more stable families.”