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| - The U.S. Constitution states that the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States. Elon Musk was born in South Africa.
On Dec. 22, 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump rebuffed criticism about Tesla CEO founder Elon Musk's growing influence in Republican politics by claiming Musk can never be president because he wasn't born in the United States.
Trump made the comments during a speech (starting around the 1:02:54 mark in clip) in Phoenix, Arizona:
"All the different hoaxes. The new one is: 'President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.' No, no, that's not happening," he said, before ticking off Musk's recent activities, including a SpaceX rocket launch and the deployment of Starlink, the satellite internet service from SpaceX, in North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
"But no, he's not going to be president, that I can tell you," Trump continued. "And I'm safe. You know why he can't be? He wasn't born in this country."
National and international media outlets covered Trump's claim, including The Guardian, The Washington Post and NBC News. Trump's full comments are available on PBS News' YouTube page.
Trump is correct: Musk can't be president of the United States because he wasn't born in the country. That's based on requirements spelled out in the U.S. Constitution and reports of Musk's birthplace. Thus, we rate this claim as true.
The Constitution's qualifications clause — Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 — states that the president must be born in the United States (emphasis ours):
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
According to "Elon Musk: A Biography" by American journalist Walter Isaacson— a book Musk announced on X — Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971. Musk received American citizenship later on; he's posted about going through the application process on X.
Snopes previously fact-checked a claim that Musk meets eligibility requirements for the speaker of the House of Representatives. It's true lawmakers could elect him as House speaker, theoretically putting him second-in-line for the presidency after the vice president. However, U.S. law on presidential succession notes that if the House speaker "fails to qualify" for the office of the presidency, then the House speaker is skipped over in the line of succession. Thus, Musk cannot become president even if he became House speaker.
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