Did President Donald Trump write "every Republican vote counts as 3 votes" because of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk? No, that's not true: A review of Trump's Truth Social account found no record of such a post, although one post contained a similarly worded message without the "3 votes" language. At the time of writing, no established news outlets had reported that Trump shared such a statement.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @Road_trippn account on X on Oct. 4, 2026. It read:
OK...WTF?‼️‼️‼️
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Road_trippn on X.)
Lead Stories manually reviewed Trump's Truth Social account for any matching posts (archived here). Lead Stories also searched Trump's Truth (archived here), a website that archives Trump's Truth Social posts. At the time of writing, Lead Stories found no exact matches, but one was very similar.
Real vs. fake post
The real and fabricated Trump posts appear below. The real post is on top, and the fake one is on the bottom. The fabricated post includes a lot of the same wording as the real post, but adds the line that says, "THANKS TO THE GREAT ELON MUSK EVERY REPUBLICAN VOTE COUNTS AS 3 VOTES!" The fake post also has a few typos, which are circled in blue below:
(Image sources: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social and post by @Road_trippn on X.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from credible news outlets using the search terms: "Trump," "Republican vote," "counts as 3 votes," and "Musk."
