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| - As authorities arrested and charged a 26-year-old man in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, a screenshot of a purported X post by tech billionaire Elon Musk went viral.
The alleged post criticized people who were defending the suspect as a "folk hero" for supposedly targeting Thompson and empathized with insurance companies that "have a duty to shareholders to maximize profits." Per the screenshot, Musk supposedly posted:
It's disgusting how everyone is turning this guy into some kind of folk hero. Insurance companies, like any company, have a duty to shareholders to maximize profits, no matter how ruthlessly. The radical left espousing otherwise needs to grow the hell up.
(X user @Eric_Biggz)
However, the screenshot was fake. Musk never made the X post, and we found no evidence of him making the alleged statement about the shooting suspect and health insurance companies via another medium.
The screenshot was suspicious because it did not contain a link to the alleged X post.
We looked through Musk's profile and found no evidence of the statement. Had he actually posted it, mainstream news outlets would have published articles about the comment. That had not happened.
Musk has not explicitly commented on the shooting, as of this writing.
However, he has posted about health care and other high-profile arrests in the event's aftermath.
For example, on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, 2024, shortly after Thompson's killing and before the suspect's arrest, Musk posted links about what he described as "wasteful" American spending on health care.
Then, on Dec. 10, 2024 — after Manhattan prosecutors charged the shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione, with murder — Musk reposted an AI-generated image from the X account AutismCapital that depicted individuals who resembled Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jay-Z, Sam Bankman-Fried and the fictional character Luigi from the Mario franchise in a jail cell. (The video game character could be a reference to Mangione, who was taken into police custody the day prior. Meanwhile, Combs was in custody awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, as of this writing, and Bankman-Fried was serving time in prison for fraud. On Dec. 8, 2024, rapper Jay-Z was accused in a lawsuit of raping a teen girl alongside Combs, but he has denied the allegation.)
(X user @AutismCapital)
This was not the first fake post attributed to Musk since the UnitedHealthcare CEO's shooting. Another screenshot claimed he wrote on X that "the world would not be able to function" and "America would be destitute" without CEOs like him. Reuters dubbed that alleged post a fabrication, as well.
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