Fact Check: Parody Account Claimed Pentagon Spent $600 Million On Sushi, Air Force $1,280 Per Paper Coffee Cup, IRS $230K on Cinnamon Coffee

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fact Check: Parody Account Claimed Pentagon Spent $600 Million On Sushi, Air Force $1,280 Per Paper Coffee Cup, IRS $230K on Cinnamon Coffee Parody Account

Did Elon Musk post he found out at DOGE that the Pentagon spent $600 million per year on sushi, the Air Force $1,280 per paper coffee cup and the IRS $230k per month on "Starbucks Cinammon Roast K Cups"? No, that's not true: Those claims originated on a parody account that pretended to be Elon Musk. The account was literally named "Not Elon Musk" and it had a bio that said "This is a parody account."

The claims originated in a post on X (archived here) published on January 24, 2024. It read:

Good morning 𝕏! My experience with DOGE has been totally wild so far. I told you yesterday about the $600 million per year the Pentagon was spending on Sushi...

Well, I just found another wild one! The Air Force was spending $1,280 per paper coffee cup! Like literally those ones you find at the office. $1280!!! We also found that $230k per month was being spent by the IRS on Starbucks Cinammon Roast K Cups, but everyone was working from home!

Anyway, back to work! Have a great day!

This is what the post looked like:

elonpost.jpg

(Image source: screenshot of x.com post taken by Lead Stories on February 4, 2025 at 15:43:11 UTC)

The accompanying image of Musk bore the logo of Grok AI and the Hive AI detector Chrome extension said it was 99.5 percent confident the image was create with AI.

hivemusk.jpg

(Image source: screenshot of Hive Chrome Extension results taken by Lead Stories on February 4, 2025 at 15:47:31 UTC)

The account @iamnot_elon (archived here) on X has a bio that reads:

Parody account
NOT Elon Musk. This is a parody account. Short stories, news, polls and more! @NotSpacewear. Boss of @lindayaxc, dad of @teddy_musk. New acct @xMotivationClub

A Google search of the doge.gov website (archived here) did not reveal any content mentioning sushi, paper coffee cups or cinnamon. Neither did a search of DOGE's X account (archived here).


  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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