Did Elon Musk withdraw $250 million from Boy Scouts of America while being quoted as saying, "Not A Single Penny To Woke Organizations"? No, that's not true: This claim originated from an article on a satirical website known for publishing fabricated content. There is otherwise no publicly available or credible evidence to support this claim.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on May 27, 2024. The caption opened:
Elon Musk Pulls $250 Million Funding from Boy Scouts
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed May 29 20:25:37 2024 UTC)
The watermark on the image in the post reads, "Rated Satire." It correlates to the link the author of the post pinned into the comment section: of a SpacexMania.com article (archived here) titled, "Breaking: Elon Musk Withdraws $250 Million from Boy Scouts, 'Not A Single Penny To Woke Organizations.'"
The article did not cite any credible sources that could substantiate this claim.
The "About Satire" section on the "Disclaimer" page (archived here) of the SpaceXMania.com website, in part, reads:
Please note that the article under the category 'SATIRE' are satirical in nature and are not meant to be taken seriously. These articles are meant to be humorous and are often entirely made up. We make no claim that the information presented in these articles is true or accurate.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google, visible here, and found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
A search of the X platform, formerly known as Twitter and currently owned by Musk, using keywords found in the post and article, showed that Musk has not made any posts that substantiate this claim.
A search (archived here) of the Boy Scouts of America website using keywords from the post and article produced no results to substantiate this claim.
Lead Stories reached out to the Boy Scouts of America organization for a statement regarding the validity of this claim. This fact check will be updated if a response is received.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning the SpaceXMania website and Elon Musk can be read here.
