Abstract:
On October 10, according to the New York Times, Ashley St. Clair, a former American right-wing Internet celebrity and the mother of a child of Elon Musk, received US$40 million (approximately 270 million yuan) in "hush money" from Musk to prevent her from revealing her relationship with Musk. However, she chose to speak out.
St. Clair at home in New York
St. Clair is fed up with people asking her the same questions about Musk all the time. "People think of me as some kind of Elon psychoanalyst," she said during a visit to The New York Times in September. "They want to know, 'What's it like to be with him?' Or they'll say, 'Not many people have one-on-one time with him,'" she sighed. "It's really annoying and time-consuming."
However, it is understandable that people would ask her this. St. Clair, a former conservative internet celebrity, gave birth to a child for Musk in 2024. At the time, she also had a child from a previous relationship. This fall, she was featured in Alex Gibney’s documentary “Musk.” This nearly four-hour documentary tells the story of Musk, the world's first trillionaire.
However, she had more pressing issues to discuss. "This is about the deeper corruption in our society, which is that we equate capital with morality," she said. "As long as a person has money, we will give him a certain degree of social trust and personal trust."
TMZ, a well-known American gossip news website, once reported that
St. Clair rejected a confidentiality agreement worth $40 million.
After that, Musk responded through
Saint Clair
In December 2025, Oscar-winning documentary director Gibney met St. Clair for the first time. He said in an email: "In addition to Musk's obsession with having children, Ashley will also have close access to Musk during the 2024 election and be able to tell me things about Musk's motivations for entering politics that I did not know before."
The following is an interview with St. Clair in The New York Times:
Q: Were you nervous about participating in this documentary?
Answer: Not nervous. I'm familiar with some of Alex's documentary work, such as "Parting the Fog." I love his fearless attitude. He always respects facts and different people's opinions.
Q: You have already seen this film. How does it feel?
Answer: What makes me feel that my experience has been confirmed, but also scares me, is that the accounts of different people are so consistent. Me, Justine (Musk’s first wife), Sam Harris (New Atheist philosopher), and Geoffrey Hinton (known as the godfather of AI), each of us has too many similarities in our experience with Elon. I think if you can have stories told by people who have never spoken to each other echo each other and form a coherent narrative, then that's the truth.
Q: What will your life be like when you meet Musk in 2023?
A: I was working as a single mother at the conservative news site The Babylon Bee. I also have a public presence, mostly on Twitter, repeating the rhetoric of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) camp. Musk followed my Twitter account and took the initiative to send me a private message.
Q: How do you feel when he pays attention to you?
A: I don’t think people understand how much attention Musk would pay to who he interacted with at that time. I received congratulatory text messages from people in the MAGA camp. Immediately someone said, "She's going to be the next woman to bear his child." I was about to turn 24 at the time.
Q: When did you first meet?
A: We have been chatting via private messages on Twitter. Later, in an interview with The Babylon Bee, he asked me, “Would you like to go to Providence, Rhode Island?” Within an hour, I was on his private jet. When we arrived in Providence, we checked into the same hotel room. He fell asleep listening to a podcast about Kublai Khan. It all feels like a dream.
Q: Does this relationship feel like a love relationship to you?
A: I would say it's a very emotionally intimate relationship. We are in contact every day. But I never felt like I was “the chosen one.” At the time, he was seen as a guardian of free speech, and I was deeply immersed in it all. I think I also kind of admired him at that time.
Q: When did you start talking about having a baby together?
A: In January 2024, when we were on vacation in St. Barthélemy, he said to me: "You should have 10 children! Let's have one. My only limited resource is time."
Q: What does this mean to you?
A: I would have liked more children, so this means that I will always be able to take care of my children financially. In addition, in the MAGA camp, being a single mother is seen as a stain on one's character. So it meant a lot to me to be fully endorsed by such a prominent figure on the right and to feel validated in my choice.
Q: Did you hesitate at that time?
A: It wasn’t until I became pregnant that I started to have concerns. Watching the custody battle between Elon and Grimes (they have three children together) made me realize, "I have to protect myself."
Q: When did you receive the confidentiality agreement?
Answer: I was two months postpartum. Jared Birchall, Elon’s financial manager and confidant, sent the document via a message on Signal that disappeared after being read. We didn't have a formal financial agreement, so at that moment, receiving this NDA was like, "If you want any kind of support, sign this."
Q: What they mean is: "If you want financial support, sign." So, what are the specific terms of this confidentiality agreement?
A: I can never speak about Elon or anything related to our relationship, and those terms also apply to my heirs. I can tell our child who his father is, but I can't tell my other child, or anyone else. He offered a one-time payment of $15 million, followed by $100,000 a month for 21 years.
Q: But you finally decided not to sign.
A: To me, this is more of a moral question than a legal question. I told Jared I couldn't sign. He responded, "Why? It sounds like you're trying to weaponize your voice." I told him that my children's dignity was not a commodity that could be traded.
Q: Has Musk discussed this confidentiality agreement with you?
Answer: No.
Q: Now you're an important voice in Gibney's documentary.
A: People need to understand that part of the reason why I'm so prominently featured in the documentary is because other people can't speak. I don't think we should ignore this. I don't want to speak out publicly or be interviewed. I don't want to sit here and do this interview at all right now. But there is a web woven of confidentiality agreements. I feel I have a moral obligation to tell this story.
Q: Let’s talk about how you gradually distanced yourself from the MAGA camp. When did this start?
Answer: This process happens slowly and then suddenly changes completely. There were times when I couldn't accept what I was witnessing: misogyny and racism, but I was a coward then.
Q: What would you say to those who think she only moved to the left because she was abandoned by the right?
Answer: I'm not stupid. I know what will happen when I speak out against Elon, and I accept the consequences. There’s a video of me before I got pregnant, in which I said I’m not a conservative. So there have been moments where you can see these rifts between me and the conservative establishment.
Q: You have posted numerous transphobic, racist and misogynistic comments. Has anyone else paid a price for the public image you have created?
Answer: I have been thinking about this question. Recently, I received a notification that some hospitals were discontinuing gender-affirming medical services. When I read this, I felt so remorseful. I know this could have happened without me, but I still feel guilty for my role in it.
Q: How do you see your role today?
A: After years of political propaganda, dishonesty, and nearly a decade in the MAGA camp, my only job is to be honest and set an example for my children. I shouldn’t try to shape a new narrative for myself. The only thing I should do is take responsibility for what I have done.
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