Did Elon Musk start a public campaign in early January 2025 to cancel "The View"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no confirmation that Musk posted what was attributed to him. No credible media organizations reported on what was described as a public campaign.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on January 6, 2025. It said:
Breaking new: Elon Musk Takes Bold Move: Launches Public Campaign to Shut Down 'The View,' Rallying Support to End the Controversial Show Once and for All.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Thu Jan 9 15:39:37 2025 UTC)
On the same day, the same account on Threads added a link to a longer article making the same claim (archived here). It was published on January 3, 2025, on a website that didn't disclose anything about the team behind it.
The article, in part, read:
His campaign began with a series of fiery posts on X (formerly Twitter), where he rallied his massive following to join him in boycotting the show.
'Enough is enough,' Musk tweeted. 'We need platforms that encourage meaningful discussions, not perpetuate toxic divides. Let's end The View and demand better.'
It continued:
Mυsk's campaigп has garпered sigпificaпt atteпtioп, with hashtags like #EпdTheViewNow aпd #FreeSpeech treпdiпg oп social media. Sυpporters praise Mυsk for addressiпg what they see as a loпg-staпdiпg issυe iп maiпstream media.
On the next day, January 4, 2025, an identical piece was published on a different website, and that site lacked an About section, too.
On January 6, 2025, the story appeared on the third website, also of undisclosed origin.
A search across Google News for January 2025 reports containing the keywords seen here (archived here), here (archived here) and here (archived here) did not produce any proof of the claim.
Google searches across Musk's account on X for keywords seen here (archived here) and here (archived here) didn't show any evidence he ever posted the words attributed to him.
A Google search across posts on X for the hashtag #EпdTheViewNow mentioned in those articles (archived here) didn't produce a single result. A Google search across Musk's posts on the same platform (archived here) didn't show any matches, nor did an advanced search on X across his account (archived here).
It is not the first time ABC's talk show "The View" (archived here) has been targeted by false claims. For example, Lead Stories wrote in the past that Musk did not sue "The View" or Whoopi Goldberg for $70 million and that ABC did not issue an "official statement" saying that Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg contracts "will not be renewed because they are too toxic."
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Elon Musk are here.
