SpaceX successfully launches Starship while Trump, Musk gaze on
SpaceX was hoping to repeat the catching maneuver via mechanical arms that it successfully completed in October.
The claim: Elon Musk is not a US citizen
A Nov. 28 Threads post (direct link, archive link) claims billionaire Elon Musk is missing a key requirement to take a leadership role in U.S. government.
“Elon Musk is NOT a Citizen of the United States and has NO Place anywhere near our government,” reads text over a picture of Musk.
The post received more than 1,000 likes in a week. A similar post was shared on Facebook.
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Our rating: False
Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002, about a decade after he first came to the country. Public records show he is registered to vote in Texas, where state law bars noncitizens from registering or voting.
Musk came to US as college student in 1992
Musk lives in Texas – where noncitizens are prohibited by law from registering to vote or from casting ballots in federal, state or local elections. He said in a Nov. 5 X post that he voted in Cameron County, home of the SpaceX-owned Starbase facility.
Public records from the Texas Secretary of State show he is registered to vote there, which wouldn’t possible if he wasn’t a citizen, as the post falsely claims.
Musk, the world’s richest person, spent his childhood in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s three capital cities, but he left that country after he graduated high school to attend college in Canada, The New York Times reported. He came to the U.S. in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and later graduated with bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics, CNN reported.
Musk moved again in 1995, this time to Palo Alto, California, where he planned to start a graduate program at Stanford University. However, Musk never enrolled and instead decided to focus on a tech start-up, according to CNN, which cited Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Musk.
In 2002, Musk officially became a U.S. citizen. He took the citizenship oath with a few thousand other immigrants at the Pomona Fairplex, also the site of the Los Angeles County Fair, according to a 2012 profile in Esquire.
In a Feb. 4 post on X, Musk said the process of becoming a U.S. citizen was “extremely difficult” and took him more than a decade.
Fact check: Did Elon Musk agree to buy CNN for $3 billion? No, that’s satire
The year Musk became a U.S. citizen, he also founded SpaceX and was involved in a deal that resulted in PayPal being acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, with Musk pocketing $165 million, according to a CNN timeline.
The Washington Post reported in late October that Musk worked illegally in the U.S. after he chose not to attend Stanford, which left him without a legal basis to remain in the country. Musk, though, has denied he worked in the U.S. illegally, saying on X he “was in fact allowed to work” in the country.
Musk was a major donor to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign. Before the election, Trump repeatedly promised mass deportation and has since said he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military to carry out that effort, as USA TODAY previously reported.
The social media user who shared the post could not be reached for comment.
PolitiFact also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources
- The New York Times, Nov. 19, As Elon Musk Moved to the Right, His Businesses Moved to Texas
- Texas Secretary of State, June 4, Election Advisory No. 2024-19
- Elon Musk, Nov. 5, X post
- Texas Secretary of State (archive), accessed Dec. 6, My Voter Portal
- NBC News, Aug. 30, Elon Musk says voting by mail is ‘insane’ — but he has done it himself, records show
- The New York Times, May 5, 2022, Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege
- CNN, Oct. 28, Elon Musk is sharing some details about his immigration path. Experts say they still have questions
- CNN, Sept. 29, Elon Musk is one of illegal immigration’s harshest critics. He once described his past immigration status as a ‘gray area’
- Esquire, Nov. 14, 2012, Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will
- Elon Musk, Feb. 4, X post
- Elon Musk, Oct. 26, X post
- The Washington Post, Oct. 27, Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally
- The Washington Post, Nov. 1, Under Trump immigration policies, Elon Musk might have faced a ‘bad situation’
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