Ashley St. Clair launched herself into the center of a very public tangled drama when she claimed she was the mother of Elon Musk’s 13th child — and accused the world’s richest man of refusing to recognize the baby.
The tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency boss is used to juggling priorities. But his complicated love life has drawn comparisons to something out of an imperial court — full of intrigue, suspicion and power struggles.
St. Clair, 26, outed herself after the 53-year-old Musk’s public appearances with his other children — and with their mothers, too.
Before her sensational claim, St. Clair was known as a right-wing culture warrior on X with sassy conservative takes — such as claiming that then-VP Kamala Harris “can’t help herself from bending over for a man to get ahead.”
Now St. Clair appears to be publicly fighting for attention from Musk — who has made no secret of his desire to have a big family and has often appeared in public with his son X Æ A-12, who he shares with pop singer Grimes.
X Æ A-12, known as “Lil X,” has been a frequent feature of Musk’s public appearances in the past year. He played a huge role alongside his father at the inauguration of President Donald Trump with his playful antics, garnering media attention.
The 4-year-old also threatened to steal the show while in the Oval Office with his dad and Trump for the signing of an executive order last week.
Another of the mothers of Musk’s children, Neuralink exec Shivon Zilis, has been a feature at Musk’s side at some of his recent public appearances lately, too — playing with her two children as well as X at one point while the tech chief held a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The psychodrama involving St. Clair and Musk has ramped up in recent days, with her telling The Post that she faces threats and vile abuse from his fans.
Musk hasn’t out-right confirmed St. Clair’s claims of sharing a child with him.
On Sunday, Musk was conspicuously quiet on X after a weekend of rampant posting.
Love story
It may have been Valentine’s Day, but St. Clair was not feeling the love when she took to the Musk-owned X platform to claim he is her baby daddy.
St. Clair, who previously worked at the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, said she had given birth last fall.
In a subsequent interview with The Post, St. Clair described Musk as “down to earth,” saying he wanted to keep their son a secret for everyone’s safety.
But in a plotline that reads like a soap opera, Musk and St. Clair soon got into a social media feud, with the Tesla and Space X CEO responding to a post that claimed his youngest baby mama had worked for five years to “ensnare” him, with him writing simply, “whoa.”
In a since-deleted post, St. Clair then accused Musk of refusing to speak to her and of responding publicly to “smears” shared online.
The spat has drawn the ire of many female conservative influencers, including “trad wife” H. Pearl Davis, who replied to St. Clair’s original statement on X by writing sarcastically, “Congrats on single motherhood!!!”
Bethany Mandel, a columnist for the Deseret News and Ricochet, also mocked St. Clair, sharing a screengrab of her response to Musk on her X and writing, “I strongly recommend having a baby daddy who lives in your house, so that you don’t have to tweet him.”
Big daddy
Musk has reportedly fathered at least 12 children with four different women over 22 years.
His wide-ranging dalliances have been compared to Imperial Chinese concubines and their battle to be close to the throne, with even Grimes appearing to acknowledge the similarities as she wrote “lol,” in response to a viral X thread about the comparisons.
In 2002, his ex-wife Justine Wilson gave birth to his first child, a son, Nevada Alexander, who tragically died at just 10 weeks old.
He would go on to have five more children with Justine, including twins Vivian and Griffin, born in 2004 — and triplets Damian, Kai, and Saxon, born in 2006.
Vivian came out as transgender in 2022 shortly before legally changing her name to remove the surname Musk.
According to Musk’s biographer, he has accused Vivian of being a “communist” who thinks that “anyone rich is evil,” while also blaming her left-wing views on the progressive private school that he sent her to in California.
Musk had an on-off relationship with actress Amber Heard between 2017 and 2018, after the pair met at the previous year’s Met Gala.
However, Musk called the fling with Johnny Depp’s ex-wife “brutal” and “mind-bogglingly painful,” according to his biographer, and the pair went their separate ways citing their busy schedules as the reason.
He was first linked with pop star Grimes in 2018 and two years later, she gave birth to their first child Lil X — Musk’s seventh — in 2020.
Musk and Grimes share two other children — a daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl, born 2021, and a boy, Techno Machinus, born 2023.
Court papers from Travis County, Texas, and shared by Insider revealed in 2021 that Musk had fathered two children with Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, one of his companies.
In 2024, Zilis gave birth to a third child with Musk, although their sex and name has yet to be announced.
Musk has been largely quiet on the baby drama on X since St. Clair’s statement dropped, sharing a number of posts instead regarding the latest iteration of his chatbot, Grok.
Musk has made no secret of his desire to have a big family, writing in a July 2022 X post to his followers that he was, “doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
His growing family has met with the approval of many of his fans, with one posting on X that Musk’s latest baby was yet another of his “side quests,” a remark that drew a crying laughing emoji from the billionaire.
In October, it was reported by the New York Times that he had purchased a 14,000-square-foot compound in Austin for his kids, along with adjoining properties for two of the three mothers of his children.
