After Charlie Kirk was killed, Did Elon Musk announce that he would be ending every partnership tied to LGBTQ+ brands? No, that's not true: This made-up story used names and themes trending in September 2025 to drive clicks to a website. There is no evidence supporting this fake narrative about Musk; no legitimate reporting, no quoted statements, and no tweets from Musk's X account.
The fake story appeared in a post (archived here) published on Sept. 23, 2025 by the Facebook page TechTalk Today. The post caption links to booknest.org and reads:
🔥 ELON MUSK SENDS SHOCKWAVES THROUGH THE CORPORATE WORLD: Terminates Every LGBTQ+ Partnership Amid Tyler Robinson - Lance Twiggs Scandal and the Ch@rl!e K!rk Attack
FULL STORY: https://booknest.org/.../elon-musk-sends-shockwaves...
Elon Musk just dropped a corporate bombshell: ending every partnership tied to LGBTQ+ brands in the wake of the Tyler Robinson-Lance Twiggs scandal and the shocking attack on Charlie Kirk. The business world is reeling, investors are scrambling, and social media is on fire. 🌐💥
What do you think--bold move for transparency or reckless overreaction? 🤔 #ElonMusk #BreakingNews #CorporateDrama
This image was one of two included with the Facebook post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of image from facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=122148149480802941&id=61574088253882.)
An advanced Google search for "Elon Musk" AND "ending every partnership tied to LGBTQ+ brands" returned no relevant results, only copies of this same fake story. One version posted on Threads (archived here) contains a deceptive button directing, not to a website, but to download a private messaging app.
An advanced search on X (archived here) for posts only from @elonmusk which include the words "brand OR partnership OR LGTBQ OR LGTBQ+" also returned no relevant results. The last time Musk posted any of these words was on July 29, 2025 when he used the word partnership in regards to a video call he had with leadership at Samsung. That was posted before Charlie Kirk was killed and had nothing to do with the story in question.
The image included in the Facebook post was determined to be AI-generated by the detection tool at hivemoderation.com with a 99.9 percent confidence rating (pictured below).
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of image from hivemoderation.com.)
The page transparency report for the Facebook page (pictured below) shows page managers from Vietnam, Pakistan, and the Philippines. This alone does not mean a story is fake, but in recent weeks Lead Stories has debunked many other fake stories originating from Facebook pages managed overseas and linking to low quality fly-by-night websites which could be characterized as "made-for-advertising" or MFA sites.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of image from facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574088253882&sk=about_profile_transparency.)
Two other made-up scenarios debunked by Lead Stories (here and here) were linked to booknest.org -- a blank webpage. In the case of this fake Elon Musk story, clicking on the booknest.org link will redirect the user to another website, news.linkxtop.com (archived here). The written text of the article is unusual in two ways. First the article is composed of many images of paragraphs, not actual formatted text. These paragraphs are peppered with homoglyphs, the term for text characters which resemble letters from the Latin alphabet but are actually characters from another alphabet. In the sample below the lowercase "n" and "u" are represented by look-alike characters. There are several reasons bad actors might use homoglyphs, for example to avoid search engine or ad network blocking, or plagiarism detection -- but there are no reasons why a legitimate news outlet would do this.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from news.linkxtop.com/posts/elon-musk-sends-shockwaves-corporate-world-terminates-every-partnership-amid-tyler-robinson-lance-twiggs-scandal-krk-attack-khanhnhi123.)
