In late March 2025, an audio clip purportedly featuring the voices of tech billionaire Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump
The allegedly leaked clip appeared to show Musk expressing concern over Tesla motors future, saying, "Tesla is going down," with Trump allegedly offering reassurance, saying, "Soon everybody will be buying again."
Musk is CEO of the electric vehicle company, which has come under attack after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led mass federal government layoffs in early 2025, among other controversies. Despite being prominently positioned as the public face of DOGE, Musk is technically a White House Office employee, serving in an advisory role to the president.
Several readers contacted Snopes to ask about the audio clip and whether Musk was actually crying or sobbing to Trump in the Oval Office about Tesla's stock.
One March 31, 2025, X post (archived) shared by @YourAnonCentral (Anonymous) account featuring the audio clip, as of this writing, reached over 1.4 million views.
Real? https://t.co/JpgszGe7Uy pic.twitter.com/eiwTSwBd0S
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) March 31, 2025
The user shared the clip as a quote tweet of an earlier post from March 12, which read: "So it turns out Musk was audibly sobbing at the Oval Office which may have triggered the bizarre Tesla Whitehouse promo." By connecting the two posts, the account appeared to imply that the allegedly leaked audio served as possible evidence supporting the earlier claim that Musk had cried during a meeting with Trump.
The March 12 post likely referred to an event held one day earlier, where Trump and Musk showcased Tesla vehicles in front of the White House. The claim about Musk sobbing in the Oval Office circulated on other platforms at the time, including Threads and TikTok.
The audio clip allegedly featuring Musk expressing concern about Tesla, with Trump offering reassurance, spread on Instagram, X, YouTube, Threads, and TikTok, and Reddit. Some social media users claimed the clip captured Musk crying to Trump in the Oval Office.
However, there was no credible evidence that such a conversation ever took place, or that Musk was sobbing in the Oval Office. Moreover, no reputable news outlets have reported on any such leak, and the audio itself lacked verifiable context or evidence to support its authenticity. AI-detection tools suggested with high confidence that the clip was generated using artificial intelligence.
We've contacted the Trump administration to confirm the audio was artificially generated and to clarify if such a conversation ever occurred.
What we know about the audio clip
The in-question audio clip featured an exchange between two male speakers, allegedly Trump and Musk (transcription ours):
Voice 1 (allegedly Trump): It's okay. It's okay.
Voice 2 (allegedly Musk): It's not okay. Because Tesla is going down and it's, it's, it's not good.
Voice 1: You're a smart guy. You can do this.
Voice 2: It's bad. It's really bad.
Voice 1: Everything's going to be okay. It's all going to come out in the wash, as they say. Soon everybody will be buying again.
Voice 2: I hope so.
However, no reputable media outlets or credible sources have reported on the existence of this purported leaked audio or any similar recorded conversation between Trump and Musk. Given the high profiles of both individuals, any authentic leaked conversation involving them would almost certainly have attracted significant attention from mainstream news organizations or investigative journalists. Instead, the audio in question appears to have initially surfaced and spread on TikTok, before being reposted across other platforms.
The widely circulated clip included a TikTok watermark with the handle @elonmuskarmy3, suggesting it was originally posted by that user.
(X user @YourAnonCentral)
A version of the post was partially archived on March 27, 2025, via the Wayback Machine internet archive tool, showing it had been shared 16 hours earlier with the caption, "Leaked audio from meeting between Trump and Musk." However, as of this writing, the TikTok account @elonmuskarmy3 no longer existed.
Some social media posts spreading the clip linked to the Instagram account @rindoamaestarte, with one use writing: "Real or fake, WE DO NOT HAVE CONFIRMATION YET' HOWEVER THE PERSON I'VE SEEN UPLOADING THESE AUDIO CLIPS HAS BEEN GETTING SUPPRESSED."
The audio clip in question, shared by a user with the same @rindoamaestarte handle, was also stitched into several TikTok posts, which led us to a partially archived version dated March 23, 2025 — the earliest known instance of the clip being shared. It was captioned: "Repost! We do not have confirmation if this is AI or real there is a mole on Tik tok uploading these clips if we can try and get confirmation we may better understand the relationship at play in the White House."
(Wayback Machine)
As of this writing, the account no longer existed on either Instagram or TikTok.
All in all, the exact origin of the clip remained uncertain, with no credible evidence confirming its authenticity.
It's highly likely the audio clip was AI-generated
The DeepFake-o-meter tool developed by the University at Buffalo Media Forensic Lab, which combines several detection models, assessed the audio as highly likely AI-generated, placing the probability between 98.8% and 100% (see screenshot below).
(DeepFake-o-meter)
Similarly, the Deepfake Total tool developed by Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security indicated the likelihood of being a deepfake with probability 87.4%.
(Deepfake Total)
Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector, however, reported its "models are uncertain about this voice," indicating ambiguity regarding its authenticity.
Lead Stories, a fact-checking organization, also investigated this video.
In March 2025 we investigated a similarly fake audio clip allegedly featuring U.S. Vice President JD Vance criticizing Musk. We have also debunked a fake podcast episode in which Donald Trump Jr. allegedly said, "I truly can't understand why anyone in their right mind would choose Ukraine as an ally when Russia is the alternative. The U.S. should have been supplying weapons to Russia instead."