Claim of Elon Musk funding ‘anti-woke’ TV show is satire | Fact check

A Sept. 23 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows side-by-side photos of billionaire Elon Musk and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
“Elon Musk Will Fund a New Anti-Woke Show With Tucker Carlson: ‘We Need More Journalists Like Tucker Carlson and Fewer Like Rachel Maddow,’” reads both the post’s caption and the text in the image.
The comments contain a link to a longer article that cites a formal announcement from Musk about funding the supposed show.
The post was shared more than 800 times in four days. Similar versions accumulated hundreds of additional shares.
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The claim originated from an account that publishes satirical content and labels it that way. There are no credible reports of any announcement about the supposed show.
Musk – the founder of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla and owner of the X (formerly Twitter) platform – has condemned what he termed the “woke mind virus,” saying he was “tricked” into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures for his estranged transgender daughter.
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But the post’s claim that he and Carlson teamed to create a new “anti-woke” television show is false. There are no credible news reports of an announcement about such a TV program.
The claim was first shared in a Sept. 5 Facebook post from the SpaceX Fanclub account, which states in its intro section that “nothing on this page is real.” Tim Lawson, who operates the account, confirmed to USA TODAY that the story is a fabrication.
The comments to that post include a link to a longer article published Sept. 5 by Esspots.com about Musk’s purported announcement that also is labeled as satire. The Sept. 23 post includes a link to an article that is nearly identical to the Esspots article but contains no satire disclaimer.
Both articles cite a purported announcement from Musk about funding the “Truth Unleashed” show. There are no credible reports of any announcements from the billionaire about a show with that name. Carlson, who parted ways with Fox News in 2023 shortly after the network settled its defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million, streams The Tucker Carlson Show on Musk’s eponymous online network, and there have been no announcements of any changes about the launch of a second show.
The Sept. 23 Facebook post is an example of what could be called “stolen satire,” where content originally presented as satire is captured and reposted in a way that makes it appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.
Musk has been a frequent subject of misinformation. USA TODAY previously debunked false claims that he banned actor Robert De Niro from the X platform, called for schools to prohibit the pride flag and advocated for a boycott of Tyson Foods.
USA TODAY reached out to several Facebook users who shared the claim but did not immediately receive any responses.
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