CNN reported that Elon Musk is thinking about melting the Statue of Liberty to make limited edition Cybertrucks?

Claim:

CNN reported that tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is considering melting down the Statue of Liberty to create a line of limited-edition Tesla Cybertrucks.

Evaluation:

In late November 2024, a rumor circulated online that CNN reported that tech entrepreneur Elon Musk was considering melting down the Statue of Liberty in New York to make a series of limited-edition Tesla Cybertrucks.

For example, a user on the social media platform Bluesky posted (archived) a screenshot of a purported CNN article written by Brian Stelter, the news network’s chief media analyst. The headline read: “Elon Musk Considers Melting Down the Statue of Liberty to Make a Line of Limited Edition Cyber ​​Trucks.”

The photo in the alleged article also included an image of the Statue of Liberty, which featured the likeness of US President-elect Donald Trump. The caption read: “‘Lady Liberty is French. “There is nothing less American than this statue,” Musk said above him at a lunch at Mar-a-Lago.”

The Bluesky user said of the screenshot: “These days it’s difficult to distinguish satire from reality.

A user who replied The post said: “The French helped us win the American Revolution and have been solid allies ever since. “Musk is ignorant.” Another wrote: “I think it’s fake. I couldn’t find any of this on the CNN website, although they claim the article is current.”

Other users also reposted the same screenshot on Bluesky and Threads.

However, CNN did not report such news. Stelter himself said (archived) that it was “a completely made up story. Additionally, there have been no credible news articles about Musk considering melting down the Statue of Liberty.

Rather, the rumor originated from a Reddit post (archived) that was marked as satire on the r/PoliticalHumor subreddit. On November 30, 2024, user u/Scorpini_83 posted a larger image of the fake CNN article and captioned it, “This isn’t happening… is it?” The post also included the caption, “It’s satire.”

At one point, a moderator of the subreddit commented: “To those of you who reported this as either ‘needs a satire tag,’ ‘fake news,’ or ‘spreading misinformation,’: The satire is obvious; If you really don’t understand that, then that’s an intervention.”

The fictional story spread in the weeks after Trump appointed Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new government efficiency department. The Associated Press noted that the department is “not a government agency, contrary to its name.”

The user who took the screenshot of the fake article took the body of the story from a real CNN article by Stelter about Musk allegedly coming up with the idea of ​​buying MSNBC. Snopes previously reported the false rumor that Comcast was putting MSNBC up for sale in November 2024.

Snopes has made similar satirical claims about Musk in the past, including the claim that he praised to pay for Trump’s “extravagant inauguration ceremony” in 2025 and a satirical rumor that he is suing Whoopi Goldberg and the ABC show “The View.”

As a background you can find here Why We draw readers’ attention to rumors originating from sources that describe their edition as humorous or satirical.

Sources