A post shared on Facebook claims X owner Elon Musk is going to purchase ownership of McDonald’s. 

Verdict: False

There is no evidence for this claim.

Fact Check:  

President-elect Donald Trump appointed Musk to co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy which plans to cut government spending, according to BBC. Musk suggested it is possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the spending which was reported to be $6.75 trillion, the outlet reported.

The Facebook post purports Musk is purchasing McDonald’s. The post shows images of Musk posing at a McDonald’s location  and one of him eating spaghetti.

The caption claims that Musk stated, “I am officially buying McDonalds.” It then goes on to say, “Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Twitter, has just made an announcement that nobody saw coming: he is officially buying McDonald’s.”

This claim is inaccurate, however. There are no credible news reports about Musk purchasing McDonald’s. (RELATED: Did Elon Musk Ban DreamWorks From X?)

There are no posts on Musk’s X account to suggest that he said he would be buying McDonald’s. Musk in April 2022 shared a screenshot of a fake post from him that reads, “Now I’m going to buy McDonald’s and fix all of the ice cream machines.” He captioned this by saying, “Listen, I can’t do miracles ok.” 

Listen, I can’t do miracles ok pic.twitter.com/z7dvLMUXy8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022

The post’s image of Musk inside of a McDonald’s yielded a 98.8% likelihood to be created with the use of artificial intelligence (AI), according to AI-detection tool Hive Moderation. Similarly, the picture of him eating spaghetti showed a 93.7% likelihood and the one of him outside a McDonald’s shows a 99.8% likelihood.

Check Your Fact reached out to a McDonald’s spokesperson for comment.