Elon Musk compared trump to hitler

Question

The line between news and satire has blurred so much that the latter has been shared on social media as fact, where it quickly spreads misinformation.

Answer 1

The claim that Elon Musk compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is false. The origins of the claim likely stem from a post on X sharing a doctored screenshot from The Atlantic, that depicted a nonexistent Atlantic article titled "Trump is Literally Hitler", to which Elon Musk commented on, foolishly believing it to be true. The purpose of the faked screenshot is to likely ragebait interactions from right-wingers to sympathize with the former president and to discredit The Atlantic as a news source. In reality, The Atlantic's article was regarding Trump's admiration for dictators and disparagement of veterans. The Forbes article linked helped support this.

Answer 2

The title of this post is misleading. The article from Forbes and the exert taken is actually referring to a photoshopped article that an anonymous user posted. However, Elon Musk comes into the conversation because he reposted the photoshopped message with his own addition, "They are literally foaming at the mouth." According to a different news source linked below, Musk's comment was taken as him calling out "anti-Trump hate" made by the opposing political party. Users have been criticizing him for not being able to tell it was fake and encouraging audiences to be upset at a photoshopped image.

https://newrepublic.com/post/187463/maga-musk-fake-news-story-atlantic-trump-hitler

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/10/23/elon-musk-shares-made-up-headline-that-compares-trump-to-hitler-and-its-not-the-first-time/

Comments

Great response! I appreciate how you clarified Elon Musk's involvement with the issue. His comment "They are literally foaming at the mouth" makes his standing on the issue a little big vague. Furthermore, since Elon Musk owns X, he could easily moderate the social inflammation by deleting the post. You marked the claim as "Exaggerated/Misleading" but given the evidence that you presented, I'd say that it was completely false: there is no evidence that Elon Musk did not compare Trump to Hitler.

Answer 3

There was not a point in the article that stated that Elon Musk compared Trump to Hitler. What actually happened was that Musk reposted a photoshopped image of a fake news article that doesn't exist, and they showed that Musk commented on it saying that "this is insane" and that people are "literally foaming at the mouth." This is getting the wrong idea from this article.

Answer 4

The author used info from Susan Campbell, a Prize-winning journalist, a widely-read newspaper columnist, and the author of three books. However,  the claim that Elon Musk compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is not true because Elon must tweeted “They are literally foaming at the mouth” but nothing that implies he compared Trump to Hitler. The article calls the Atlantic a "legitimate news organization" even though it does not always clearly delineate between reporting and opinion content. The author dramatizes the situation, making it seem like everyone believed it was true. You could very well search it up and the first thing that pops up is Atlistic’s article about how they did NOT publish the “Trump is literally Hitler”, so this misinformation is easy to debunk.

Elon Musks Post

Susan Campbell

Answer 5

The title of this post is misleading but the claim in the content of the post is true. Media in general is always misleading and the power social media hold makes it so false information can spread faster than it should. The article from Forbes explains the false post with the title "Trump is Literally Hitler" and how the internet spiraled after it was posted. The articles has the direct post from X and the responses and comments that it received. The post was a fake new headline and it was shared so much that the fact the headline was false got lost. Even Elon Musk reposed the headline and believe that it was true, Forbes has the post from X as evidence.