“Yes please and cancel Whoopi while you’re at it,” one commenter exclaimed.
Claim: Elon Musk wants to buy the U.S. television network ABC so that he can cancel the show “The View.”
On July 6, 2014, the Facebook Page The Patriots Network published a post with an image positing that tech magnate Elon Musk was going to buy the U.S. television network ABC in order to cancel one of its flagship shows, “The View.” The post had obtained 21,000 reactions and 2,800 comments as of this writing. Commenters reacted in agreement. “Yes!! Most despicable talk show with a bunch of haters… cancel asap,” one demanded. “Oh I hope so, they are the most prejudice people, they thrive on hateful talk especially,” another one added, indignant.
The pinned comment under the post linked to an article on the website SpacexMania.com. The article relayed the same allegation: Breaking: Elon Musk Is Considering Owning ABC, “I’m Going To Cancel Woke The View.” In the latest chapter of his entrepreneurial saga, Elon Musk is reportedly considering the acquisition of ABC, one of the largest and most influential television networks in the United States. This potential move comes with a bold promise to “cancel woke The View,” a statement that has already sparked considerable controversy and debate.
This item was not a factual recounting of real-life events. First, we ran the text of the article through several artificial intelligence (AI) detectors, including writer.com, CopyLeaks, and ZeroGPT, all of which identified it as AI-generated. Further, the article originated with a website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature, as follows: Our mission? To bring you the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire, all rolled into one crazy concoction that orbits around Elon Musk and everything that’s lighting up the viral/trending charts.
The Facebook page of The Patriots Network confirmed this, disclaiming “The Patriots Network is a Network of Satire and Parody affiliated with SpacexMania.com.” Lastly, the post itself noted that it was satire: “Elon Musk is going to cancel The View tv show – Satire.” We’re written about similar stories before, in May 2022 and in April 2024. For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.
A meme about Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the daytime talk show “The View,” and an Applebee’s coupon spread widely on social media.
Claim: Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered $17 and a coupon for a free appetizer at Applebee’s to buy the “The View” talk show.
Rating: Labeled Satire
Context: This claim appeared to have originated as a joke in early May 2022. It spread as a meme on Facebook, perhaps leaving some users to wonder if Musk had earnestly, or jokingly, made the offer to buy “The View.”
Fact Check: In early May 2022, a meme began spreading on Facebook with a picture of comedian Joy Behar and the words, “Elon Musk issued a tender offer to buy ‘The View’ outright for $17 and a coupon for a free appetizer at Applebee’s.” However, as some readers may have guessed, this claim appeared to have originated as a joke.
The origins of the meme remained unknown. As it spread on social media, Musk had just offered to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion, a move that put heightened attention on just about every tweet he issued. In late April and early May, the Tesla CEO genuinely tweeted about his love of chocolate milk, his thoughts on politics, the accomplishments of SpaceX, and the idea of “buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”
Basically, his tweets at the time were a mix of casual, serious, and apparent joking, so the idea that he had tweeted, whether in jest or not, that he’d buy ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” “for $17 and a coupon for a free appetizer at Applebee’s” was in no way out of the realm of possibility.
Also, the content of the daytime talk show gave superficial credence to the meme. For years, “The View” has been considered to be a mostly left-leaning show in terms of politics, with hosts like Behar and actor Whoopi Goldberg often advocating for ideas that align with the Democratic Party. For example, The New York Times Magazine once published that, “according to the consumer-intelligence company MRI-Simmons, almost 65 percent of its viewers who are registered to vote are Democrats, and only 12.6 percent are Republicans.”
Meanwhile, Musk had previously made several comments on the subject of modern American politics. He once said of “wokeness” that it “gives people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.” Also, days before the joke meme appeared online, Musk had tweeted, “The far left hates everyone, themselves included!” Additionally, he said his goal for Twitter, in order for the platform to “deserve public trust,” was to upset “the far right and the far left equally,” and tap into “the area under the curve of total human happiness, which means the ~80% of people in the middle.”
As for the meme itself, while some Facebook commenters seemed to know it did not document an authentic action by Musk involving an Applebees coupon and “The View,” others perhaps weren’t so sure. A simple search of the social media platform for the words “Musk” and “Applebee’s” showed what looked like an endless stream of posts sharing the meme, many of which had at least a few comments.
This is only a small sampling of the posts sharing the meme that we found on Facebook. A number of the comments on the posts were users who played into the humor, saying that the price mentioned would be Musk paying too much to buy “The View.”
In sum, no, Musk didn’t offer to buy “The View” for “$17 and a coupon for a free appetizer at Applebee’s.” This claim appeared to simply have originated as a joke, and it didn’t come from one of his tweets.
Source: Facebook and AmericasBestPics.com
