Did entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk say, "I'd rather drink sewer water than see Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl," as a post on Facebook claimed? No, that's not true: This claim originally appeared in an article on a satirical website known for publishing fabricated content. There is otherwise no publicly available or credible evidence to support this claim.
A version of the claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on May 23, 2024, with a caption that read:
Breaking: Elon Musk Says "I'd Rather Drink Sewer Water Than See Taylor Swift At The Super Bowl"
See full story in the comment👇
Below is how the post appeared at the time of this publication:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Mon June 3 16:02:45 2024 UTC)
The link in the caption of this post led to a kohajone.press article (archived here) titled, "Breaking: Elon Musk Says 'I'd Rather Drink Sewer Water Than See Taylor Swift At The Super Bowl.'" It was posted on May 23, 2024.
A Google keyword search (archived here) revealed that the meme and caption shared on Facebook originated from a February 8, 2024, Facebook post (archived here) published by the "SpaceX Fanclub" page (archived here). The page includes an intro that reads:
We post SATIRE, nothing on this page is real.
In the comment section, the author of this post linked an Esspots.com article (archived here) with the exact title of the kohajone.press article -- "Breaking: Elon Musk Says "I'd Rather Drink Sewer Water Than See Taylor Swift At The Super Bowl" published by the satirical website Esspots on January 20, 2024.
The About Us page (archived here) of the Esspots website begins:
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites (archived here), but it found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
Lead Stories previously debunked the claims that Keanu Reeves rejected a $1.7 billion "woke" movie offer and that country music television banned Taylor Swift "for life," both of which originated from esspots.com articles.
Other Lead Stories fact checks involving Taylor Swift can be read here.
Other Lead Stories articles on claims concerning Elon Musk are here.
At the time this was written, CheckYourFact and Reuters had reviewed the same claim.
