Did tech billionaire and Donald Trump's ally Elon Musk go on X to say that "this country's billionaires are tired of subsidizing everyone else's schools, parks, health care, even food and entertainment"? No, that's not true: Neither his live posts on the supposed publication's date nor archived versions of his account on X showed the purported quote. The picture of it was uploaded on the internet for the first time only the next day by an account that explicitly described the contents it publishes as "ironic/parodic/satirical".
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads where it was published on February 22, 2025. The entry shared what looked like a screenshot of Elon Musk's entry on X, which read:
Here's the hard truth: this country's billionaires are tired of subsidizing everyone else's schools, parks, health care, even food and entertainment. You want nature? Buy some land. Health care? Befriend a doctor. Entertainment? Roll around in the mud with your fellow pigs.
This is what the post on Threads looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Feb 24 17:45:35 2025 UTC)
The post on Threads showed a cropped version of the viral image shared on social media. A larger version of it -- for example, seen here (archived here) displayed not only the same quote but also a publication's date: February 14, 2025.
However, neither an internal advanced search on X (archived here) nor a Google search across Musk's account or a search across Google News for reports on the supposed publication's date and the following day produced any matches:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 24 17:43:07 2025 UTC)
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Feb 24 17:39:06 2025 UTC)
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Feb 24 17:44:48 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories manually reviewed Musk's posts from February 14, 2025, via live links on X (archived here) and archived copies of his posts available on Archive.Today here and here, but none said what the image attributed to him.
A comparison between the appearances of his authentic entries and the one in question revealed discrepancies suggesting that the "screenshot" was digitally manufactured. Unlike real posts, it lacked the AM/PM mark in the time stamp section and referred to February in numerical form instead of the first three letters of the month's name.
Despite being purportedly published early in the day on February 14, 2025 (either shortly after midnight or just before 1pm local time), the earliest mention of the Musk's "post" did not appear until February 15, 2025, when the "screenshot" was uploaded to a subreddit (archived here) whose self-description reads:
All posts in this subreddit should be considered ironic/parodic/satirical unless they are flaired as \*REAL\* *and* have a relevant, trustworthy source in the comments (which should be your standard for all internet content anyway).
The comments manually reviewed by Lead Stories did not offer any links to any credible sources corroborating the authenticity of the quote.
The same claim was previously reviewed by Logically Facts and Snopes.
