Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has responded to a fake CNN story about him supposedly thinking about melting down the Statue of Liberty in New York City. According to the rumor, Musk was considering melting the world-famous statue to make a series of limited-edition Tesla Cybertrucks.
Musk jokingly posted (archived) on X on Dec. 11, 2024, "No, I definitely melted it down 1,000%." He included a screenshot of a Reuters fact check debunking the rumor, which featured the headline, "Fact Check: CNN headline about Musk melting down the Statue of Liberty is fake."
The rumor circulated as a purported screenshot supposedly showing a CNN article by Brian Stelter, the news network's chief media analyst. For example, a user on the Bluesky social media platform posted (archived) the image showing the CNN logo and a headline reading, "Elon Musk Considers Melting Down Statue of Liberty to Make Series of Limited Edition Cyber Trucks." Stelter himself later said (archived) on X that it was "a totally made-up story."
The photo accompanying the fake CNN article showed the Statue of Liberty with the likeness of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. The picture's caption read: "'Lady Liberty is French. There's nothing less American than that statue,' Musk was overheard saying at a Mar-a-Lago luncheon."
The Bluesky user said of the alleged screenshot, "Hard to decipher satire from reality these days."
One user who replied to the post said, "The French helped us win the American Revolution, and they've been solid allies ever since. Musk is ignorant." Another wrote: "I think it's fake. I couldn't find any of this on the CNN website even though the article is claimed to be recent." Other users also reposted the same screenshot on Bluesky and Threads.
The rumor originated with a Reddit post (archived) labeled as satire on the r/PoliticalHumor subreddit. On Nov. 30, 2024, user u/Scorpini_83 posted a taller image of the fake CNN article and captioned it with: "This ain't happening… is it?" The post also featured the label: "It's satire."
At some point, a moderator for the subreddit commented: "To those of you who reported this as either 'needs a satire tag,' 'fake news' or 'spreading misinformation': The satire is obvious; if you genuinely didn't understand that, then this is an intervention."
The fictional story spread in the weeks after Trump named Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. The Associated Press noted that the department is "not, despite the name, a government agency."
The user who created the image of the fake article sourced the story's body text from a genuine CNN article written by Stelter about Musk supposedly floating the idea of buying MSNBC. Snopes previously reported on the false rumor that Comcast had put MSNBC up for sale in November 2024.
Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about Musk in the past, including the assertion that he vowed to pay for Trump's "extravagant inauguration bash" in 2025 and a satirical rumor that he was suing Whoopi Goldberg and the ABC show "The View."
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.