Did President-elect Donald Trump tell Elon Musk to "stay in your lane" in a post shared to Truth Social? No, that's not true: This supposed post was fabricated. Lead Stories checked Trump's verified Truth Social account and did not find such a post as of this publication. The post in question was also not included in a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts. No information about this supposed post about the world's wealthiest human and the president-elect has been reported on the website of any news outlets indexed by Google News.
The claim appeared in a Threads post (archived here) published on December 22, 2024, with a caption that read:
And now a word from the vice president elect... 🤡.
The post included a screenshot of what appeared to be a statement posted by Trump to Truth Social that read, in part:
So, Elon, I'll say this: thank you for the support, but it's time for you to stay in your lane.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Dec 23 14:58:26 2024 UTC)
The claim was presented as a genuine Truth Social post made by Trump, in which he supposedly dispelled rumors that Musk was the president-elect.
Lead Stories searched Trump's Truth Social posts and did not find a post resembling the claim (archived here) as of this publication. We also checked the Trump's Truth website for the post (archived here). Trump's Truth is a public archive of the president-elect's Truth Social posts. Similarly, a search did not return any relevant results.
During a December 22, 2024, speech at Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference, the president-elect acknowledged Musk's perceived influence in this C-SPAN video (archived here). At 1:02:40 in the video, Trump said:
We will create the new Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk. And no, he's not taking the president. I like having smart people. You know, they're on a new kick. Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, all the different hoaxes.
A Google News search for keywords only resulted in articles about Tesla and X (archived here). Lead Stories did not find any information that would prove the existence of the "stay in your lane" post supposedly made by Trump.
We contacted Trump's spokesperson and will update this article if a relevant response is received.
At the time this was written, Snopes had reviewed the same claim.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Donald Trump are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Elon Musk can be found here.
