Did entrepreneur Elon Musk announce that he tried to "buy the Bidens, but the Chinese wouldn't sell them"? No, that's not true: There is no publicly available evidence to suggest that Musk said or tweeted such a statement. The "tweet" in this post is fake.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post on April 28, 2022. It has an image of what seems to be a tweet attributed to Elon Musk. It reads:
I tried to buy the Bidens, but the Chinese wouldn't sell them
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Wed May 4 18:01:04 2022 UTC)
The "tweet" was most likely created via an application like Photoshop, as it does not include a timestamp or date as all official tweets do.
A Twitter search using keywords, "I tried to buy the bidens (from: elon musk)," and an archive search of Musk's tweets on his verified Twitter account revealed no results that substantiated that he published a tweet like this on or around April 28, 2022, or since then.
A Google search using keywords, "Elon Musk 'I tried buying the bidens,'" also produced no results that confirm that he ever announced this, as it would be a significant news event if he did make such a statement.
Lead Stories reached out to the Twitter platform and other companies already owned by Musk concerning the validity of this claim and will update this story if a response is received.
Lead Stories has written about other claims involving Musk and fake tweets, you can see those stories here and here.
