Elon Musk’s wildest conspiracy theories from UK prison camp to Donald Trump ‘fix’

As President Donald Trump today returns to the White House, eyes will also be on one his closest pals – Elon Musk.

Billionaire Musk has formed a firm alliance with the twice-impeached US President in recent years, and has made no secret of his loyalty to the MAGA movement.

And his vocal support of the divisive businessman turned politician has taken Musk, 53, into powerful new circles, with the tech mogul appointed as co-lead in Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump, who once blasted Musk as a “bull**** artist” back in less amicable times, has spoken warmly of his affection for the SpaceX entrepreneur, but not everybody is too keen on this high-profile new appointment.

Indeed, there are those who’ve expressed serious concern over Musk’s habit of spreading worrying misinformation with his legions of worshipping followers. Here, the Mirror takes a look at just some unfounded conspiracy theories circulated by Musk…

COVID misinformation

Musk has spread a number of false claims about COVID over the years, and his views on this matter appear to have shifted somewhat. In a 2021 interview with Time, Musk revealed he and his children had been vaccinated, saying “the science is unequivocal”. However, he clarified that he was opposed to vaccine mandates, which he regarded as the “erosion of freedom in America”.

In December 2022, Musk appeared to call for Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the face of the US response to the pandemic, to be prosecuted, posting: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” He also tweeted a photoshopped image of Fauci whispering in President Biden’s ear, with the caption: “JUST ONE MORE LOCKDOWN MY KING…”

He later elaborated: “[Dr Fauci] lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome IMO.”

Dr Fauci was asked about these attacks during an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, in which he responded: “There’s no response to that craziness, Jim. Prosecute me for what? What are they talking about? I wish I could figure out what the heck they’re talking about. I think they’re just going off the deep end.”

Warning of the dangers of this type of misinformation, the medical expert continued: “Every time someone gets up and spouts some nonsense that’s misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, somebody somewhere decides they want to do harm to me and or my family.”

“That’s the part of it that is really unfortunate. The rest of it is just insanity, the things they’re saying. But it does have a negative effect when people take it seriously and take it out on you and your family.”

In May 2023, Musk also tweeted a discredited article that stated “zero young healthy individuals died of COVID-19″.

Misleading gunman claims

On May 6, 2023, 33-year-old Mauricio Martinez Garcia walked into the Texas shopping centre, Allen Premium Outlets, and opened fire. He managed to fatally shoot eight people, including three-year-old James Cho, before a cop who was already at the scene gunned him down.

After his death, Garcia’s extreme Right-wing views came to light, with the mass killer, who was inked with Nazi tattoos, having made his white supremacist views on social media. Authorities and independent researchers also confirmed Garcia’s interest in far-right extremism and white supremacism. The day he carried out his rampage, Garcia had been wearing a patch that read ‘RWDS’ – an acronym that stands for ‘Right Wing Death Squad’.

Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Hank Sibley said: “We do know he had neo-Nazi ideation. He had patches. He had tattoos.” Garcia also posted a huge material on a Russian site Odnoklassniki, as reported at the time by investigative outlet Bellingcat.

However, even though Garcia’s disturbing beliefs had been confirmed by authorities, Musk proceeded to suggest that revelations about the gunman’s background could be a ‘psyop’ – a psychological operation whereby members of the public are misled about the true details.

In a tweet that was viewed more than 3 million times, Musk wrote: “This is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!” Musk’s posts in response to revelations about Garcia’s ideology also suggested he didn’t believe the official account, describing the reports as “very strange” and stating: “This gets weirder by the moment.”

Detainment camp

In August 2024, Musk shared a false image tweeted by Britain First party co-leader, Ashlea Simon, which puported to show an article published in The Telegraph, about ‘detainment camps’. According to this fake article, which was nothing more than a mock up, the UK was building camps on the Falklands Islands where they would keep rioters.

At the time, BBC News reported that Musk’s post clocked up more than 1.7 million times before it taken down with acknowledgment, with Simon’s post briefly tagged with a message which read “this story does not exist” before it was also removed.

A Telegraph Media Group spokesperson stated: “This is a fabricated headline for an article that does not exist. We notified relevant platforms and requested that the post be taken down.”

Hurricane Helene untruths

In September 2024, Musk was among those who made unfounded statements in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a catastrophic storm which claimed the lives of more than 200 people across the Southeastern United States.

On social media, Musk claimed that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “actively blocked” donations to victims, and that it had stopped flights from bringing assistance to the disaster-struck area.

Accusing FEMA of “belligerent government incompetence” of “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own”, he also alleged that North Carolina authorities had “taken control to stop people helping” affected residents and wrongly claimed that sheriffs had threatened to arrest FEMA staff “if they hinder rescue and aid work.”

Taking the opportunity to make a dig at the Democrats, Musk tweeted: “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.”

Responding to Musk’s baseless accusations at the time, transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, replied: “No one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights. If you’re encountering a problem give me a call.”

Politico reports that FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters that the churn of conspiracy theories surrounding Helen was “absolutely the worst I have ever seen”. She revealed: “I anticipated some of this, but not to the extent that we’re seeing.

“It’s just really unfortunate that [people] continue to try to create this level of fear in these communities that is impeding our ability to do our job at the level that we need to do it, but we’re not going to let it deter us. We are going to continue to be in these communities and support them for whatever they need.”

US Election claims

Back in October, Musk was busily showing support for his chum Trump, being one of his most vocal supporters on the campaign trail. This display of friendship also included peddling debunked theories about voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which saw President Joe Biden elected into office.

Trump accused Dominion Voting Systems, a leading election technology supplier, of rigging the election in Bidens’s favour. The firm was later paid a $787 million (£639 million) settlement by Fox News following a lawsuit related to the Right-wing news outlet’s repeated broadcasting of these false claims. However, there are many die-hard Trump supporters who remain adamant that voter fraud took place, despite this having been disproved.

On January 6, 2021, two months after Trump’s defeat, seething MAGA fans stormed the Capitol building in a violent attempt to prevent Congress from formalising Biden’s victory, resulting in deaths and multiple injuries.

On October 17, 2024, Musk fuelled these furious fires once more at a campaign town hall in Philidelphia, where he told attendees: “When you have mail-in ballots and no, no sort of proof of citizenship, it becomes almost impossible to prove cheating, is the issue.”

He continued: “There’s some very strange things that happen that, that are statistically incredibly unlikely,” Musk continued. “So, there’s always a question of, like, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”

A Dominion spokesperson made the following statement in response to Musk’s claims: “Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter-verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts,

At the same event, Musk echoed Trump’s oft-repeated falsehood about the need to return to paper ballots, urging: “We should only do paper ballots, hand-counted. That’s it. I’m a technologist. I know a lot about computers, and I’m like, the last thing I would do is trust the computer program.”

This is despite the fact that, as per CNN, more than 98 per cent of voters in the US already live in jurisdictions that have fully auditable paper trials in place.

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