Elon Musk peddles debunked 2020 election conspiracies at first solo town hall supporting Trump

Elon Musk promoted several debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election during his first solo town hall Thursday in Pennsylvania, as he urged voters in the battleground state to support former President Donald Trump.

Elon Musk promoted several debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election during his first solo town hall Thursday in Pennsylvania, as he urged voters in the battleground state to support former President Donald Trump. Asked by a member of the audience gathered at the event in the Philadelphia suburbs about supposed “cheating” in 2020, Musk delivered a somewhat rambling response filled with basic inaccuracies and blatantly false claims about US elections. “When you have mail-in ballots and no, no sort of proof of citizenship, it becomes almost impossible to prove cheating, is the issue,” Musk falsely claimed. Voter fraud is rare, but when it does happen, it is usually caught thanks to the layers of safeguards built into voting processes, according to nonpartisan election experts. Musk’s comments on stage in front of Pennsylvania voters were consistent with much of the billionaire’s factually challenged commentary on his social media platform X, where he regularly promotes debunked pro-Trump conspiracy theories. “There’s some very strange things that happen that, that are statistically incredibly unlikely,” Musk continued. “So, there’s always a question of, like, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not a lot of other places. Doesn’t that like kind of a coincidence?”