Musk did say this on X in July 2022, but it was only one half of his post. The second half read: "If [Ron] DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign."
A claim that Tesla and X owner Elon Musk once said Trump would be "too old" to be president by the end of a potential second term resurfaced online in late October 2024 (archived).
As of this writing, the post had amassed more than 1.4 million views and 80,000 likes.
However, this claim had cropped up online before. In August 2024, the campaign account of Vice President Kamala Harris — Trump's opponent in the 2024 presidential election — posted a screenshot (archived) purportedly showing one of Musk's old posts just as the X owner and former president prepared to chat on X Live.
The Tesla founder's alleged X post read: "Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America."
Harris' campaign appeared to be pointing out that this supposed post contradicted Musk's endorsement of the former president. One month prior to their live chat, the billionaire announced he backed Trump on the day the Republican nominee survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania (archived).
Musk did indeed post the quote on July 12, 2022, which is why we rated this claim as being correctly attributed to the Tesla owner. However, it required more context.
The original post read as follows (archived): "Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America. If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn't even need to campaign."
That same day, Musk posted various arguments for not supporting Trump (archived and archived).
Snopes has regularly addressed social media posts about Musk and Trump in the build-up to the 2024 presidential election.