Elon Musk didn’t target Trump’s golf trips in an X post about DOGE

Since his first term, President Donald Trump’s golf trips have drawn criticism from detractors. And a recent HuffPost analysis found that taxpayers have so far footed a bill of more than $26 million for such outings in his second term. 

But billionaire and White House adviser Elon Musk didn’t suggest on X that the Department of Government Efficiency had inadvertently identified Trump as the source of fiscal waste. 

“Unbelievable,” reads what looks like a March 16 screenshot of a Musk post. “The DOGE team has discovered TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS spent on GOLF by a SINGLE GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. Stay tuned for when we figure out who it is.”

Facebook posts sharing this image were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Musk didn’t post this on X. 

It doesn’t appear in his X feed, and we found no credible news reports indicating he posted and deleted such an announcement. 

The image shared on Facebook also doesn’t reflect what the X website looks like today. For example, it appears as though Musk had “94 Retweets” at the time the screenshot was taken. But “retweets” ceased to exist after Musk acquired Twitter and renamed the social media platform X. 

The purported post echoes a March 9 Guardian headline: “US taxpayers have shelled out tens of millions of dollars for Trump’s golf trips.” 

But claims this is an authentic Musk post are wrong. We rate them False.