Fact Check: Parody Account Claimed Pentagon Spent $600 Million On Sushi, Air Force $1,280 Per Paper Coffee Cup, IRS $230K on Cinnamon Coffee

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Did Elon Musk post he found out at DOGE that the Pentagon spent $600 million per year on sushi, the Air Force $1,280 per paper coffee cup and the IRS $230k per month on "Starbucks Cinammon Roast K Cups"? No, that's not true: Those claims originated on a parody account that pretended to be Elon Musk. The account was literally named "Not Elon Musk" and it had a bio that said "This is a parody account."

by: Maarten Schenk

The claims originated in a post on X (archived here) published on January 24, 2024. It read:

Good morning 𝕏! My experience with DOGE has been totally wild so far. I told you yesterday about the $600 million per year the Pentagon was spending on Sushi...

Well, I just found another wild one! The Air Force was spending $1,280 per paper coffee cup! Like literally those ones you find at the office. $1280!!! We also found that $230k per month was being spent by the IRS on Starbucks Cinammon Roast K Cups, but everyone was working from home!

Anyway, back to work! Have a great day!

The accompanying image of Musk bore the logo of Grok AI and the Hive AI detector Chrome extension said it was 99.5 percent confident the image was create with AI.

The account @iamnot_elon (archived here) on X has a bio that reads:

Parody account
NOT Elon Musk. This is a parody account. Short stories, news, polls and more! @NotSpacewear. Boss of @lindayaxc, dad of @teddy_musk. New acct @xMotivationClub

A Google search of the doge.gov website (archived here) did not reveal any content mentioning sushi, paper coffee cups or cinnamon. Neither did a search of DOGE's X account (archived here).

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