Elon Musk shared two posts on X that showed support for the long-debunked Pizzagate conspiracy on Tuesday. The posts are part of a recent pattern where the billionaire CEO endorses conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Jewish groups are corrupting “the West” with immigration.
Musk’s most recent Pizzagate post is a meme from The Office. “Pizzagate is real,” the first panel says over an image of Michael Scott. Pam explains that it’s not, according to experts. “Your expert just went to jail for child porn,” Michael replies. “Does seem at least a little suspicious,” Musk wrote in his caption.
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Musk replied to this image with a story about former journalist James Gordon Meek pleading guilty to possession of child sex abuse imagery. Over the summer, a fake New York Post headline went viral online. “Award Winning ABC Journalist Who ‘Debunked’ Pizzagate, Pleads Guilty in Horrific Child Porn Case,” it said. The Post never ran such a headline and Meek never published an article debunking Pizzagate—at most, the conspiracy was merely referenced in a story about Syria that Meek co-authored with two other reporters in 2017.
The long-debunked Pizzagate conspiracy posits that there was a dungeon underneath the suburban D.C. pizza parlor Comet Ping Pong. The story had it that Washington power players like Hillary Clinton frequented this dungeon to abuse children. Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement and the conspiracy theory has been routinely debunked, although it has had troubling real-world effects: In 2016, a man was arrested after bringing an AR-15 into Comet Ping Pong to “investigate” the conspiracy and firing several shots.
On November 20, Musk replied to another X user who pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy. This happened after Musk sued Media Matters over an investigation that showed X placed ads next to extremist content, a revelation that caused advertisers to flee the platform. In a now-deleted tweet, an X user told Musk that Media Matters’ founder “was the Boyfriend of James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong Pizza, yes the Pizzagate restaurant. Alefantis, a pizza shop owner at that time, was on GQ’s 50 Most Powerful People in DC list.”
“Weird,” musk responded.
X just can’t keep advertisers. Disney, Paramount, Comcast, and Warner Bros. Discovery pulled advertising on the platform following Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories. He’s since sued Media Matters over its reporting, toured the sites of the Hamas attacks in Israel, and continued tweeting long disproved conspiracy theories. The advertisers remain off the platform.
