NEW YORK: Twitter’s new owner and billionaire Elon Musk appears to have fallen prey to Fake News, just three days after he purchased Twitter.
According to a report published in New York Times, the billionaire posted a tweet that advanced baseless allegations about the recent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, posted a tweet assailing Republicans for spreading “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” that she said had emboldened the man who attacked Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday.
In a reply to Mrs. Clinton’s tweet, Mr. Musk wrote, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and then shared a link to an article in the Santa Monica Observer. The article alleges that Mr. Pelosi was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.
Mr. Musk’s tweet was later deleted, and it was not immediately clear who had deleted it.
According to NYT, a 2021 editorial in The Los Angeles Times about websites that “masquerade as legitimate local newspapers” noted that the Santa Monica Observer, “owned by onetime City Council candidate David Ganezer, is notorious for publishing false news.” In 2016, for example, the publication advanced a claim that Mrs. Clinton had died and that a body double was sent to debate the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.
