Within 72 hours of acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted a baseless conspiracy theory involving Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, who suffered severe injuries during a violent attack on Friday.The wealthiest man in the world took to his social media platform on Sunday morning to spread disinformation about the 82-year-old who had been beaten in the head with a hammer by an intruder.
In response to a tweet Hillary Clinton sent out about how David DePape, the suspect in the attack on Paul Pelosi, spread far-right conspiracy theories, Musk responded, "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye," and included a link to a false article that claimed Paul Pelosi and a male sex worker had been in a drunken quarrel.The article appeared in the Santa Monica Observer, an outlet that has proven itself to be unreliable at best.
For example, in 2016, the paper claimed that Hillary Clinton had died on September 11 and had been replaced by a body double.Musk's tweet, posted at 8:15 a.m.
EDT, remained up until the afternoon and caused the Santa Monica Observer's website to crash.On Twitter, Musk has more than 112 million followers.