‘You’re such a moron’: Elon Musk is getting destroyed on X for sharing an obviously fake article

You know it’s bad when your angry social media post gets flagged by the website you own for violating community guidelines.

2024 hasn’t been kind to Tesla CEO-cum-unfortunate political commentator Elon Musk, but really, that’s because he hasn’t been kind to it. If spewing vitriolic nonsense was an Olympic sport, Musk would have a gold medal. Now, with the US presidential election on the not-so-distant horizon, he’s been increasingly outspoken about his billionaire buddy, Donald J. Trump—at the cost of ruining any semblance of self-respect he may have once had. And that was a low bar to begin with.

In recent years, Musk has all but soiled his public reputation in the eyes of anyone who knows how fact-checking works. Still, he seems hellbent on destroying what little credibility he had left as the proud owner of X (a.k.a. Twitter) by writing and reposting fake news to his personal account, and the latest incident might’ve been his most egregious yet. You’d think someone who bought one of the biggest social networks on Earth would have a basic understanding of media literacy, but…

Elon Musk is (hilariously) getting ripped to shreds after boosting fake article

Earlier this week, Mr. “free speech absolutist” himself took to X to respond to a clearly doctored article from The Atlantic titled “Trump Is Literally Hitler,” written by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Musk quote-tweeted the original post from user @Indian_Bronson with, “They are literally foaming at the mouth,” proving that he took the image as truth despite that very obviously not being the case.

If you needed further proof that Elon Musk is not, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader, here it is. Yes, if the made-up headline wasn’t enough to convince him that a generally reputable publication like The Atlantic would never let any of this fly, he probably should’ve read the subheading: “Donald J. Trump is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.” His right-wing followers then jumped on the narrative, re-tweeting the post to their own pages and so on, convincing unsuspecting users that the article was legitimate.

The staff of The Atlantic cleared up the whole ordeal in an article uploaded shortly after, writing, “The fake headline distorts an Atlantic article that was published on October 22, 2024, with the headline “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had,” adding, “Anyone encountering these images can quickly verify whether something is real––or not––by visiting The Atlantic and searching our site.” As of now, Musk’s tweet is still up.

Understandably, X users had an absolute field day roasting Musk, whose post was marked with a community note reading, “This is not a real article. No such article with this headline exists on www.theatlantic.com. This is a satirical edit/photoshop.” It was later confirmed by the image’s creator that he photoshopped the article as a joke, which…okay? I think he’s missing the whole point of “satire.”

This isn’t the first time Elon Musk has spread misinformation

It’s worth noting that Musk has a track record of lying to masses by sharing similar fake news headlines. In August, he shared a fabricated article that appeared to be from the Telegraph which claimed that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer planned to build detainment camps for prisoners on the Falkland Islands. In 2022, Musk did it again, posting a link to infamous fake news site the Santa Monica Observer (via The New York Times) to peddle a conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home invasion. He never learns, does he?

In short, it’s probably not great that a tech giant like Musk doesn’t know how to verify his sources. Or even worse, he knows how to properly fact-check and just doesn’t care, wanting to push this sludge of bad-faith misinformation to better serve his agenda. Either way, considering that millions of users viewed his post on X, Musk is setting a dangerous precedent for the future of the digital age on a website that’s already rife with misinformation—the very same platform that he promised to improve, mind you. Suffice it to say, the future of social media sure looks grim.