Billionaire Elon Musk shared a fake news headline purporting to show a nonexistent article from The Atlantic titled "Trump Is Literally Hitler" to his nearly 200 million followers on X, and has left the tweet up for more than 12 hours despite a barrage of community notes pointing out the article isn’t real.
Elon Musk embraces Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Oct. 5, ... [+]
Musk, who has owned X (formerly known as Twitter) since 2022, shared an image first posted by pseudonymous writer Indian Bronson that showed a fake headline from The Atlantic magazine comparing former president Donald Trump to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The article, which does not exist, is drawn up to look like it was posted Tuesday with the subheadline, "Donald J. Trump is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler" alongside the byline of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
The fake image contains a side-by-side photo illustration of the two leaders, which was first published by The Washington Post last year alongside a real opinion piece with the headline, "Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you."
Musk added his own commentary to the retweet, posting “They are literally foaming at the mouth ????.”
Musk’s post is accompanied by X community note clarifications confirming that no such article exists on The Atlantic’s website and Bronson later confirmed that his post was meant as satire.
Musk’s re-share of the post had been up for more than 14 hours as of Wednesday morning, and had been viewed by more than 16 million people, several of whom responded with messages like “You’re such a moron" and "You have been bamboozled by a faked post."
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This is not the first time Musk has shared a fake news post. In August, Musk boosted a fake news headline purporting to be from the Telegraph that said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was considering building 'emergency detainment camps' on the Falkland Islands to detain prisoners from an outbreak of race riots in the country. The Telegraph confirmed “no such article has ever been published” by the newspaper and Musk deleted his post after about 30 minutes—but not before it was seen by nearly 2 million people. In July, he shared a video that purported to show armed gangs storming polling stations in Venezuela, but was really a video of thieves stealing air conditioners. That same month, he posted an unlabeled AI-generated video of Vice President Kamala Harris, violating X policies, and never deleted it. In 2022, Musk posted a link to an article that alleged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute and not attacked in the couple's home before deleting the post.
Faked articles from The Atlantic have circulated online several times this election cycle. In addition to the post shared by Musk this week, other fake headlines include "To Save Democracy Harris May Need To Steal An Election,” “Why Migrants Eating Cats Might Be a Good Thing” and “The Heroism of Biden’s Bike Fall.” The posts have been shared by elected officials and others with large social media followings.
The spread of misinformation on X has been a topic of discussion since Musk bought the platform in October 2022. The European Union last year called X the social media platform with the largest prevalence of fake news and disinformation, and said fake news posts or those sharing blatantly false information are common on the platform. Musk himself also uses his wide-reaching account to share his conservative views on domestic and international news (particularly since he first endorsed Trump for president in July), and a study released the same month showed that X has become more popular with conservatives since Musk took over.
Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $244.8 billion as of Wednesday. He has co-founded several companies, including electric car maker Tesla and rocket producer SpaceX, and has owned the social media platform formerly known as Twitter since 2022.