Fact Check: Viral Video Claiming Elon Musk Fired Twitter’s Legal Head Vijaya Gadde on Air Is False

Elon Musk recently took over the microblogging platform Twitter after a long hiatus. Immediately after the move, he fired the top executives of the company, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and the company’s top legal and policy executive, Vijaya Gadde. 

Against this backdrop, a viral video showing Gadde and Musk supposedly sitting in a talk show is doing the rounds on social media. In the video, Gadde can be seen admitting to failure in the company, followed by Elon Musk firing her on air. Users have shared the clip, claiming it to be the actual video of the firing of Vijaya Gadde.

A Facebook user posted the viral video with a caption: FOOTAGE: Elon Musk fired Twitter’s head of censorship Vijaya Gadde ON Air!

You can check the video here.

FACT CHECK

NewsMobile fact-checked the viral video, and found it to be false.

The viral clip shows @damonimani written in the top left corner. Searching for the same on various social media platforms, we found a profile with the same username on Twitter, having a tweet published on October 29, 2022. 

The tweet clarifies that it is a parody video and it contains a link redirecting to rumble.com. The video on the rumble link matches the keyframes exactly with the viral clip. 

Conducting a Reverse Image Search of the video keyframes, we found a YouTube live- stream video, titled: Joe Rogan Experience #1258 – Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde & Tim Pool, published on the official channel of Joe Rogan — an American commentator, dated March 6, 2019. The video is one of the podcast episodes that Rogan hosts on his YouTube channel. 

At 26:30, Gadde can be seen admitting to failure and saying the exact words that she said in the viral clip. Elon Musk is nowhere present in the podcast and Gadde is present along with the founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey, and YouTuber Tim Pool. 

Searching further about Elon Musk’s part, we came across another podcast of Jow Rogan, titled: Joe Rogan Experience #1169 – Elon Musk, published on September 7, 2018. 

The video keyframes and Musk’s attire match with the viral video, but not the audio. Throughout the video, we could not hear Musk talking about firing anybody. 

Though we could not find the exact source of the audio, it is clear that Musk’s statements in the viral video were superimposed on the video of his podcast with Joe Rogan. The entire viral clip is also made by editing and merging two podcasts and has nothing to do with the actual firing of Vijaya Gadde. 

Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral video claiming Elon Musk fired Vijaya Gadde on air is false. 

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