Elon Musk Is Now Pushing the Debunked 'Pizzagate'

On the heels of Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic post on X, more controversy for him: By NBC News' count, he's boosted the widely debunked "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory five times in the last two weeks, most recently on Tuesday with a post that generated so much heat he eventually deleted it. Musk first posted a meme showing an image of Office characters saying "Pizzagate is real" followed by a reply to that post implying the expert who debunked the conspiracy theory (which alleges high-ranking Democrats ran a secret Satanic child sex-trafficking ring out of a DC pizzeria) was jailed for child porn. Musk's comment on that: "does seem at least a little suspicious."

As the Washington Post explains, Musk was referring to a fake headline that suggested James Gordon Meek, an ABC reporter who pleaded guilty last year to possession of child sexual images, was solely responsible for debunking Pizzagate; in reality, fact checkers found he mentioned the conspiracy theory just once in his reporting, and many reporters and news organizations have debunked the conspiracy theory over the years. (Oddly, another journalist also named James Meek also mentioned Pizzagate once in his reporting.) The rest of Musk's recent posts about Pizzagate have been made in replies to other posts about the conspiracy theory, per NBC. The Post is one of the latest entities that have decided to stop advertising on X amid Musk's controversies.