Did Elon Musk permanently ban author Stephen King from X after King called Musk "the First Lady"? No, that's not true: King posted on his own X account that neither the "first lady" reference nor the ban happened. King added "Yet here I am." A Google News search did not find any news articles about Musk banning King's account.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads (archived here) on November 11, 2024. The post read:
So Stephen King was permanently banned from Twitter for calling Mr Free Speech himself Elon Musk, "The First Lady." That's funny.
This is what the post on Threads looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Wed Nov 13 13:42:47 2024 UTC)
The post did not offer Threads users any evidence that would confirm the claim.
Stephen King posted (archived here) on his X account on November 13, 2024 :
I see there's a rumor going around that I called the Musk-man Trump's new first lady. I didn't, but only because I didn't think of it. There's also a rumor going around that Muskie kicked me off Twitter. Yet here I am.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Nov 13 16:54:24 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories also searched key phrases on Google News (archived here) to see if reputable media outlets had reported on this. No results supported the quote's authenticity. The results did show other fact checks that debunked the claim.
At the time of writing, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org fact checked a similar claim.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding Elon Musk are here. Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Stephen King are here.
