Dark MAGA’s premier San Francisco antagonist Elon Musk repeated his constantly changing story that his SF employees were threatened by an axe murderer, and that SFPD did “nothing.” SFPD points out that no such thing was ever reported to them.

For a man who supposedly runs several companies and is tasked with improving the federal government’s efficiency, Elon Musk sure has time to tweet and play video games more than anyone I know. One of the latest of his (many) tweets dredges up a supposed San Francisco horror story that employees of his San Francisco Twitter/X offices were menaced by an axe murderer outside their then-Market Street headquarters, and that the SF Police Department simply refused to do anything about it.  


This weekend, Musk tweeted that “About a year ago, a guy tried to kill three X employees with an axe outside the former Twitter HQ in SF. They reported it to the police, but nothing was done. He later killed someone with that axe.”


Musk had another variation on this same tale in an October 2024 wealthy-inheritee bro-chat with Tucker Carlson. “The police did nothing, and that guy with an ax subsequently murdered two people,” Musk told Carlson (now the guy killed two people!). “If you don’t stop ax murderers while they’re attempting to ax murder, eventually they’ll succeed in ax-murdering people.”

In the nine months between these posts, Musk has changed his story’s location, number of victims, and circumstances of whether or not the man was reported.

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— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@rmac.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 9:40 PM


The death toll keeps getting higher! As the New York Times’ Ryan Mac points out above, an April 2024 tweet from Musk claimed that “Late last year, several 𝕏 employees were threatened by a guy with a machete outside the Walgreens on Market St in SF. They didn’t report it, because that doesn’t constitute an arrestable crime in California. That guy later killed 3 people.” Okay, so now they didn’t report it to police? And parenthetically, it is well-established that threatening people with a machete is an arrestable offense in California.

The Chronicle took a pull at the yarns, and asked SFPD for comment on whether any of this actually happened.

“Based on the information provided, we cannot find any incident that matches this description in that location in 2023 or 2024,” SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky told the Chron.


Musk’s stories call to mind his tweet in the aftermath of the Bob Lee stabbing blaming the crime on SF’s “repeat violent offenders.” When in fact, the man found guilty of the stabbing was a tech entrepreneur whose only previous criminal offense was for — guess what! — carrying a switchblade, for which he was indeed prosecuted in the state of California, in 2011.

Related: Bye, Elon!: Xitter to Exit the Twitter Building For Good on September 13 [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JULY 26: The outline of the iconic blue Twitter bird logo is visible on a sign in front of X headquarters on July 26, 2023 in San Francisco, California. A day after San Francisco police officers halted the dismantling of the Twitter sign at Twitter headquarters, one of the blue birds has disappeared along with three of the letters. CEO Elon Musk officially rebranded Twitter as "X" and has changed its bird logo, the biggest change he has made since taking over the social media platform. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)