Did Elon Musk announce that he has acquired MSNBC for $900 million to "put an end to toxic programming?" No, that's not true: A search of Musk's X account did not show this announcement from him on the days leading up to publication of the claim. As of March 14, 2025, no reliable news outlets were reporting what would have been breaking news.The website that published the post has an "About Us" page with broken links and incomplete content pages.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) where it was published by a website with the name Us News on March 8, 2025, under the title "7 MINUTES AGO: Elon Musk announced that he has acquired MSNBC for $900 million to put an end to toxic programming.(N)". It opened:
In a groundbreaking announcement that has sent shockwaves through the media industry, Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has confirmed his acquisition of MSNBC for a staggering $900 million.
This is what the article looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: usnews website screenshot taken on Fri Mar 14 16:01:52 2025 UTC)
The article claimed Musk made the announcement on X:
The move, which Musk revealed just seven minutes ago via his official social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), marks a bold step in his ongoing mission to reshape the media landscape. His stated goal? To put an end to what he has described as "toxic programming" on the popular news network.
Lead Stories searched Musk's account on X (archived here) with keywords "MSNBC 900 million" and did not find any matching results as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X.com website screenshot taken on Fri Mar 14 16:06:11 2025 UTC)
In November 2024, Musk replied to a tweet (archived here) by Donald Trump Jr. encouraging him to buy MSNBC, writing, "How much does it cost?":
How much does it cost?
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2024
However, he has not announced his acquisition of MSNBC in March 2025. Had he made such an announcement, it would have been national and international news. A Google search for keywords "Elon Musk acquired msnbc 900 million" found several stories repeating the claim but did not find evidence-based reports of the claim from legitimate news outlets.
The article followed a formulaic structure often used in clickbait article headlines: a person, company or group that is liked or disliked by the intended audience for political or cultural reasons gets (fictionally) punished or rewarded in some way, for example by losing or gaining a contract, job, endorsement, business deal, award or title.
The site was named US News, implying it was a generic news website similar to USA Today. The "About Us" section listed the company as New Hour Productions with an address in Arlington, Virginia, which is similar to the PBS News Hour production company (archived here) located in Arlington, Va. The links to the social media accounts on the website do not actually go to any accounts.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Elon Musk can be found here.
