Did President Donald Trump post on social media a message telling the board of Tesla to approve a new compensation package for its CEO, Elon Musk, "ASAP"? No, that's not true: It's a counterfeit. The Truth Social post attributed to Trump was not found on Trump's account. Nor was the post found on Trump's Truth, a site that archives every Trump post in order to preserve deleted posts.
The bogus Trump post appeared in a June 23, 2025 X.com post (archived here) on the @guterhr account with the title: "$TSLA Wow so true." The wording of the fake post is:
IT IS TIME TO GET ELON MUSK P-A-I-D.
THE NEW COMPENSATION PACKAGE MUST BE APPROVED ASAP!
NO ONE LIKES TO WORK FOR FREE OKAY?
DO YOUR THING TESLA BOARD FFS.
THANK YOU FOR THE ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Lead Stories searched Trump's account on Truth Social from June 16 to June 24, by hand, finding no such post. The closing line of the fake post does borrow an often-used Trump closing: "Thank you for the attention to this matter." As of June 24, 2025, no Trump posts on Truth Social included "FFS" the abbreviation of "For Fuck's Sake," a slang phrase adding emphasis or comment on a request or declaration.
Lead Stories also searched Trump's Truth, a site that archives every @realDonaldTrump post on Truth Social, saving them in a searchable system.
The last of Trump's 19 posts to mention Tesla was on March 11, 2025, (archived here) when he wrote :The Tesla Model S -- BEAUTIFUL!"
As of June 24, 2025, Trump had mentioned "Musk" 1,553 times on Truth Social, (archived here) but the most recent was an April 1, 2024 post about the campaign for president.
Reflecting their formerly friendly relationship, Trump had mentioned "Elon" 3,727 times as of June 24, 2025 (archived here). None of his June 2025 posts urged Tesla's board to act on a compensation package for Musk. The most recent of the "Elon" mentions came in a fateful June 5, 2025 post (archived here) explaining how they had become estranged:
Elon was "wearing thin," I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!
Readers wishing to read more Lead Stories fact checks about Musk and Trump will find them collected here.
