Elon Musk’s sister says it is “unfathomable” that people assumed the worst about her older brother after his evocative gesture—which resembled a Nazi salute—on President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.
Musk followed up with attacks on the media and Holocaust jokes.
But Tosca Musk says her brother’s detractors have it all wrong.
“It’s unfathomable to me to think that anybody would think such negative things about my family,” she told the Hollywood Reporter about allegations Musk’s gesture was a white supremacist signal. “That’s not who we are.”
Tosca, 50, is three years younger than Elon. She has historically backed Democrats and donated to Georgia senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
She regularly reshares her brother’s posts on X and came to his defense last month amid the fallout. Elon said he intended the gesture to mean “my heart goes out to you.”
Quote-tweeting a video from PBS that alleged Musk gave a “fascist salute,” Tosca wrote she was “remarkably disappointed” that the public broadcaster was “spreading such a hateful lie.”
“Do better,” she said.
Tosca also took issue with PBS using the word “billionaire” to describe the world’s richest man.
“I think you can come up with better adjectives than ‘billionaire,’” she wrote. “I suggest: Innovator, entrepreneur, engineer, rocket scientist, Achiever of the American Dream.”
The post—and another that included still photos of other political leaders making a similar gesture—backfired on Tosca, who runs the steamy streaming platform Passionflix in suburban Atlanta.
Tosca’s full-throated support of her brother—who has become the face of MAGA along with Trump—led to a rush of subscription cancellations, her mother, Maye Musk, claimed in a post last month.
“Unfortunately @ToscaMusk‘s movie streaming platform is suffering,” she said. “On Facebook, there is continuous hate for @PassionFlix as subscribers should not support a Nazi family. Hundreds have canceled their subscriptions. They actually believe the MSN!!! For me, I receive numerous USA and European media interviews, which I delete. Legacy media needs to die quicker.”
Tosca said her brother’s actions should not be attached to her.
“I love my family dearly, and I will always be there and always support them, but sometimes their beliefs and their structures can be placed on me as if they’re the same as mine,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “And they aren’t. Everybody is their own person with their own belief system and priorities.”
Tosca said she and the three Musk siblings remain “close,” even though it is rare for them to spend time together in person.
“There are so many people who have differing opinions to some of their family members, and it’s creating such a divide within families, and it shouldn’t,” Tosca said. “Family is number one. You need to find a way of communicating with your family. You have to find a way of engaging with people that you don’t necessarily agree with.”
