A rumor shared online in the weeks and months following U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 election victory claimed an image was an authentic screenshot of an X post by Trump adviser Elon Musk in which he supposedly wrote, "Defund the poor."
The image, shared on Threads and other social media platforms, displayed the time 8:09 a.m., the date Dec. 4, 2024, and 53 million views. For example, on Dec. 7, 2024, a Threads user posted (archived) the supposed screenshot with the caption, "I imagine this will be Elon's 'let them eat cake' moment."
Similarly, earlier on the same day, another Threads user shared (archived) the text without the image, with the caption, "Elon Musk saying 'Defund the poor' is the modern version of Marie Antoinette saying, 'Let them eat cake,' and we all know how that turned out."
A different person who responded to the post correctly noted, "First, [Musk] didn't actually say that. It was photoshopped. (But I'm sure he thinks that way.)" The response continued, addressing the quote often incorrectly attributed to Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, "Second, Marie Antoinette didn't say that about cake. That was said quite a few years before she was alive. That said, we need a French Revolution here."
Musk did not post "Defund the poor" on X. Had Musk actually made such a post and received 53 million views, news media outlets would have reported on it. However, no such reports existed. An unknown user altered a screenshot of Musk's authentic post from Dec. 4, 2024, at nine minutes after the hour, in which he wrote, "Defund the ACLU." In other words, a user created a digitally altered screenshot.
Defund the ACLU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2024
Searches for other users posting the rumor either in the form of a screenshot, text or other formats yielded numerous results on Bluesky, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, TikTok and X.
Some users who shared the fake quote attributed to Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla, included an image collage of a fire at a Tesla dealership in France. France24.com reported a prosecutor's office in the city of Toulouse opened an investigation into the incident, which occurred on the night of March 2. The fire left eight Tesla vehicles "burned out" and an additional four cars "badly damaged." Firefighters determined the cause of the fire to be criminal, according to the reporting, citing AFP.
For further reading, another recent fact-check article examined whether or not Musk reposted a meme calling people who benefit from U.S. federal programs the "Parasite Class."