Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.

I would like to contribute

stated on March 10, 2023 in a post:

Video shows Elon Musk saying he bought Twitter and unblocked Andrew Tate’s Twitter account because “we need to escape the suppression from the matrix and expose the global elites.”

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks March 9, 2020, at the Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington. (AP)

By Gabrielle Settles March 22, 2023

Video of Elon Musk talking about Andrew Tate is a deepfake

If Your Time is short

The video is a deepfake. It is manipulated from video that originally showed Elon Musk speaking during an April 2022 TED Talk interview months before he bought Twitter. That interview didn’t mention Tate.
Musk reinstated Tate and others in November 2022 in what he called a free-speech effort.

See the sources for this fact-check

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is focused on exposing "the global elites." At least, that’s the claim in a video that shows Musk parroting common QAnon conspiracy theory rhetoric.

A March 10 Facebook reel showed a Musk in a slightly blurry, zoomed-in video. In the clip, Musk appears to say: "People ask me why I unblocked Andrew Tate from Twitter. It’s the same reason why I bought Twitter. We need to escape the suppression from the matrix and expose the global elites. Andrew Tate has been offered $1 billion to shut his mouth, but since he declined, they threw him in jail."

This was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) That’s because it’s a deepfake.

A reverse image and keyword search showed the video comes from a TED Talk interview that Musk gave in April 2022, months before he bought Twitter.

The TED Talk interview was centered around Musk’s bid to acquire the platform — something that he said at the time he was "not sure" was possible.

Threads posts

stated on December 2, 2024 in a post

Former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter issued pardons to a son and brother, respectively.

Tate was not mentioned in the interview. Tate, a professional kickboxer and social media figure known for making often-misogynistic comments, was banned from Twitter in 2017 when he posted that sexually assaulted women "bear some responsibility." When Musk took over the platform in November 2022, he reinstated the accounts of formerly banned people, including Tate.

Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, were arrested in Romania in December on charges of human trafficking, rape, money laundering and forming an organized crime ring.

The brothers remain detained, though Andrew Tate still tweets from his account.

Our ruling

A Facebok reel claims to show Musk saying he bought Twitter and unblocked Tate’s Twitter account because "we need to escape the suppression from the matrix and expose the global elites."

The video is a deepfake manipulation of video captured in April 2022, when Musk gave a TED Talk interview, months before he acquired Twitter. In the real video, Musk did not mention Tate or say anything about "the global elite."

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!