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| - In November 2024, videos surfaced on YouTube alleging that tech mogul Elon Musk had been repeatedly kicked out of a hospital for wearing a red MAGA hat. According to the story, which did not provide any evidence to corroborate the claim, Musk had become the majority shareholder of the hospital earlier that week. However, the claim was false.
The rumor appeared not long after 2024 U.S. presidential election. Throughout November 2024, Musk was frequently seen with President-elect Donald Trump, who used MAGA, short for "Make America Great Again," as a campaign slogan.
The story stemmed from a YouTube channel named Storytime With Falcao, in a video with the caption, "Hospital Manager Kicks Out Elon Musk For Wearing MAGA Hat, Unaware He Is The New Owner," and a thumbnail allegedly showing Musk wearing the MAGA hat being yelled at by a woman in a suit. Artificial intelligence video-creation tools helped create the thumbnail, based on the nonsensical text in the image, and likely the video's narration, scripting, and sequencing as well, based on the automated voice-over and writing style.
Without naming a source for its information, the video's narrator recounted that a hospital manager repeatedly asked Musk to leave St. Mary's Hospital while wearing the red MAGA hat. According to the story, the manager did not allow Musk to explain that he was visiting the hospital because he had recently become its majority shareholder.
That YouTube video had been viewed more than 1.5 million times, as of this writing, since its upload on Nov. 25. Snopes found other videos on YouTube sharing similar stories, and users left YouTube comments and posts on social media sites including X spreading the rumor and implying that they believed it was true.
However, there was no evidence to support the assertion that Musk was kicked out of a hospital for wearing a MAGA hat, nor that he owned any hospital. Additionally, searching U.S. News's hospital rankings for "St. Mary's" revealed 45 different medical facilities with that name, meaning that it was unclear where the story supposedly took place.
In short, the rumor appeared to be made up from whole cloth for the purpose of gaining views online. This was not the first misleading rumor about Musk facing repercussions for wearing a MAGA hat that captured social media users' attention. For example, we previously debunked the false claim that he was asked to leave a San Francisco coffee shop for wearing a MAGA hat, an assertion that originated with a similar YouTube channel.
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