Elon Musk’s megaphone propels conspiracy theory about James Talarico

The billionaire has a history of elevating false claims like the one about the Democratic Senate nominee, but his control of X gives him outsize influence ahead of the midterms.

Elon Musk elevated a false conspiracy theory about Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico over the weekend, lifting a fringe claim concerning the Texan’s mental health to the forefront of users’ X feeds, where it garnered hundreds of thousands of impressions.

“The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about,” Musk wrote Sunday afternoon, replying to a post alleging that Talarico had been checked into the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility in suburban Cincinnati. Musk’s reply amassed over 870,000 views, more than double the impression count of the post to which he was responding.