Elon Musk Bashes the News Media, Then Immediately Falls for Fake News
Feeling Dumb
It's no secret that multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk spends an astonishing amount of time posting dubious political material on his social media echo chamber X-formerly-Twitter.
During a late Sunday night session, Musk cosigned a meme that reads: "If you ever feel dumb, just remember there are some people who still believe everything shown in [sic] news," resharing the image with a curt "yup."
But it didn't take long for Musk to out himself as one of those same gullible dupes who will believe anything if it flatters their preconceptions.
"This is messed up," he wrote a few hours later, at 3:42 am, as he reshared a video posted by Visegrád 24, an influential independent news account that tweets about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war that's well-known for posting fake news.
Visegrád 24 claimed the video showed "armed communist Maduro gangs 'Colectivos' are now storming polling stations in Punta Cardón," Venezuela.
But as an X community note quickly pointed out, that was a complete lie.
"Those are thieves stealing air conditioners and a woman can be heard in the video saying so," the note reads. "Voting in Venezuela is done on small computers that look nothing like what appears in this video."
Believing Everything
Musk quietly deleted the post without acknowledging that he'd spread fake news himself, the exact thing he'd just blamed the media for doing.
His hilariously timed blunder is far from the first. The mercurial CEO has a long history of bringing attention to racist conspiracy theories, outright propaganda, and completely made-up news reports, allowing hate speech and fake news to flourish on the platform.
Other users were alarmed at Musk blindly "believing everything" he sees on his platform.
"These are air conditioners, Elon Musk," one user tweeted. "Visegrad regularly posts fake news."
An account representing the distributed hacking group Anonymous chimed in as well.
"In an attempt at pushing propaganda, Elon pushes a false narrative that the thieves in the video are stealing ballot boxes," Anonymous tweeted, "when it's easy to see they're stealing air conditioning units for windows."
Last week, Musk shared an AI-generated video of vice president Kamala Harris, a flagrant violation of his platform's own policies.
In short, while a healthy dose of skepticism goes a long way when reading or watching the news, X-formerly-Twitter has quickly become a cesspool of unsourced claims and propaganda, making it a far worse place to catch up.
Worse yet, Musk's already tenuous connection to reality is as shaky as ever. With his endorsement of the notorious liar Donald Trump, Musk has clearly abandoned any commitment to the truth — a troubling development given the presidential election is right around the corner.
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