In November 2024, shortly after the end of the US presidential elections, a screenshot of a businessman’s post on the social network X went viral on the Internet. It was a picture of a dollar bill in which Trump shows his middle finger, and the caption that this is the last dollar for the President of Ukraine. We have verified the authenticity of this image.
The screenshot began to be widely distributed on November 6, a few hours after the polls closed for the US presidential election. Judging by the screenshot, Elon Musk posted on social network X an image of a dollar, which instead of George Washington depicts Donald Trump showing his middle finger. “Last dollar for Zelensky,” reads the English-language caption. Telegram channels wrote about Musk’s alleged tweet “Evil proof"(260,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Kremlin towers"(220,000), "Russia now"(209,000), "Uncle Slava"(204,000), "Putin on Telegram"(182,000), "Belarusian security officer» (171,000), etc.
On November 5, the US presidential elections took place. The main candidates were the current Vice President, Democrat Kamala Harris, and former President, Republican Donald Trump. All key American media outlets followed the vote count. First about Trump's victory announced Fox News channel - November 6 at 09:45 Moscow time, its analysts came to the conclusion that the politician is gaining a majority of votes in Wisconsin and thereby overcomes the required 270 electoral votes from the states for election. Soon Trump appealed to his supporters with a speech in which he called himself the next President of the United States. A little more than an hour after Fox News announced Trump's victory. reported and other American TV channels.
Billionaire Elon Musk is an active Trump supporter. He supported social media politics, spoke at his rallies, and since the assassination attempt on the ex-president in July donated almost $120 million for his election campaign. Before the elections, the entrepreneur also established America PAC, which collected donations for the Trump campaign and promoted a petition in support of freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. In swing states, signatories who persuaded other voters to register to vote were paid rewards ranging from $47 to $100, and a daily prize of $1 million was also drawn among them. Musk was sued for organizing such a lottery in Pennsylvania, but the trial was on the eve of the main voting day decided, which will not ban it. Part of Trump's election night speech dedicated businessman, calling him a new star and super genius.
Judging by the viral screenshot, Musk allegedly posted an edited image of a $1 bill, and then (remarkably, an hour later) reposted the tweet with a caption about Vladimir Zelensky. "Verified" was unable to find either of these two posts in verified account businessman on social network X. We did not find any other screenshots of any of these posts, and this is especially suspicious considering that, judging by the screenshot, they were seen by at least 35.4 million users (in total, Musk has more than 200 million subscribers on X).
The image that was distributed across Telegram channels shows the date of publication - November 6 at 07:50. Although it is impossible to reliably establish the time zone in which the author of the screenshot was located, the Russian-language X interface may indirectly indicate it. If we assume that the tweet was published at 07:50 Moscow time, then at that moment not a single major American media outlet had yet named the next US president (however, Trump was in the lead, and Musk had already posted tweets about imminent victory). At the same time, the earliest publication of a screenshot that “Verified” found appeared in the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Kremlin towers» only at 13:16 Moscow time. This is three and a half hours after Fox News first announced about Trump's return to the White House.
All sources who wrote about Elon Musk’s alleged post attached the same screenshot: it coincides with the time of publication, the number of replays, likes, reposts and views. It is noteworthy that the channels that distributed the screenshot did not include a link to the tweet itself, which makes it impossible to check the saved copies of the post in the Internet Archive and similar services. “Verified” studied archived copies of Musk’s profile on the social network X - closest to the date of the intended publication done November 6 at 16:30 Moscow time, but there is no post being distributed on it either.
The screenshot was likely doctored using image editing software and based on one of Musk's original tweets. The creators of such fakes often edit page code, but in this case the use of such a method is less likely (at least “Verified” was not able to use it to add an image to the post before taking a screenshot).
The tweet allegedly published by Musk was written mainly by Russian-language resources, while not a single authoritative American or Ukrainian publication reported on the “last dollar for Zelensky.” At the same time, many of the businessman’s tweets did not go unnoticed by the media and officials, including when the owner of X shared his thoughts about the war in Ukraine. For example, in October 2022 Musk published on the social network his peace plan for resolving the conflict, which included the re-holding of referendums in the annexed territories under UN control, recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and the neutral status of Ukraine. Then they told about this initiative Russian, Ukrainian And American The media, and shared their reaction to it on the same day Zelensky and Advisor to the Head of the Office of the Ukrainian President Mikhail Podolyak.
However, Musk did previously publish posts ridiculing the President of Ukraine. In October 2023, a year after his proposed peace plan, the entrepreneur posted a picture in which the face of the hero of the famous meme was replaced with Zelensky’s face. The caption reads: "When five minutes have passed and you haven't asked for a billion dollars in help." Shortly before the election, Trump spoke in the same spirit, calling Zelensky the greatest trader in history. According to an American politician, the Ukrainian president leaves with at least $60 billion every time after visiting the United States (according to data Kiel Institute of World Economy, which calculates the aid allocated to Ukraine, the total amount of support for Kyiv from Washington is estimated at €84.7 billion, while Zelensky since 2022 traveled to the United States five times).
Thus, there is no evidence that Musk posted a tweet about “the last dollar for Zelensky.” This post is not on the businessman’s blog and, judging by numerous indirect evidence, never was.
Cover photo: social networks
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