Mr. Musk Called Sen. Mark Kelly a Traitor. The Interview Is From March 2025.

The exchange is from March 2025. The Fox interview is from March 27, 2025. A clip of that interview can be reposted later without becoming a new interview. This desk did not open an X trending-summary page dated October 19, 2026, so this page does not state a trend rank, a view count, or that the clip led a trend that day.

This page is the receipt. It sits on the politics desk. The government-efficiency role he held in 2025 is DOGE. This post is not a DOGE savings claim.

March 10, 2025, on X

NBC News (Zoë Richards and Frank Thorp V, March 10, 2025, 7:29 p.m. EDT) reported that Mr. Musk and Sen. Mark Kelly sparred on social media that Monday. NBC says Kelly’s initial post was Sunday. In it, as NBC reports the post, the weekend trip to Ukraine, where he met military members, nurses, and others, had reaffirmed that the United States should not give up on the Ukrainian people, and that any peace deal “has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway” to Vladimir Putin. NBC says Kelly also wrote that President Donald Trump was “trying to weaken Ukraine’s hand.”

NBC quotes Mr. Musk’s reply, on X, on Monday: “You are a traitor.”

NBC quotes Kelly’s reply: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”

Label: NBC’s account of the posts. This desk did not retrieve the status IDs, and a direct fetch of x.com has been returning 403 on this site. The sentences above are NBC’s quotations, not a screenshot this desk captured.

NBC also quotes Kelly speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill the same day. He said he had sworn an oath, flown in combat, and served in the Navy for 25 years, and: “He’s not a serious guy. He should go back to building rockets.” The longer oath paragraph is in that article. Label: NBC’s account of the hallway remarks. A reporter’s quotation is not the X post.

The New York Times URL for the same day returned no article text on the fetch this desk ran. The Reuters URL returned 401. Those two stories are not the source of the quotations above. NBC is.

March 27, 2025, on Fox

The interview is Special Report, with Bret Baier, on March 27, 2025. Fox News posted the sit-down on YouTube that day: Elon Musk and the DOGE team, on the Fox News channel, published March 27, 2025. The auto-transcript excerpt this desk retrieved from that YouTube page did not reach the Kelly exchange. The quotations below are from a transcript and from two writeups of the same broadcast. They are not a new October interview.

Rev’s transcript of the interview places the exchange near the end, at about 36 minutes. Baier says Kelly posted on X about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send U.S. weapons and support, “and you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?” Mr. Musk answers: “Well, I think somebody should care about the interests of the United States above the interests of another country. And if they don’t, they’re a traitor.” Baier says: “Yeah, but he’s a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting US senator.” Mr. Musk answers: “That doesn’t mean it’s okay for him to put the interest of another country above America.”

Mediaite (Tommy Christopher, March 28, 2025) prints a transcript of the same stretch, with false starts that Rev’s version does not: “somebody should be — should care about the interest of the United States,” and “It doesn’t mean he’s — it’s OK for him to put the interest of another country above America.” Mediaite dates the broadcast as Thursday night’s Special Report. March 27, 2025, was a Thursday. March 28 is Mediaite’s story date.

Fox News (Alex Nitzberg, March 28, 2025) reports the same exchange in shorter form. It quotes “if they don’t, they’re a traitor,” quotes Baier’s “decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting U.S. senator,” and says Mr. Musk said that does not mean it is “OK” for Kelly to put another nation’s interests over the United States. Fox says the accusation itself came earlier in the month, in a reply to a post in which Kelly argued it was important for the United States to “stand with Ukraine.”

Label: Three accounts of one March 27 interview. Rev and Mediaite do not punctuate the second answer the same way. This page does not pick a single official transcript, because Fox’s own YouTube captions, as retrieved, did not include the exchange. The Hill’s March 27 story on the same interview timed out. It is not a source here.

Fox also says that after the March 10 post, Kelly said he would get rid of his Tesla, and it quotes his post: “I bought a Tesla because it was fast like a rocket ship. But now every time I drive it, I feel like a rolling billboard for a man dismantling our government and hurting people. So Tesla, you’re fired! New ride coming soon.” Fox says he later said the new ride was a Chevrolet Tahoe. Label: Fox’s account of those posts. This desk did not open them.

Fox says Kelly answered the interview on CNN: “My entire life has been about serving this country,” and that “standing with our allies and standing up for democracy is in the best interests of the United States.” Fox says he added that he would categorize Mr. Musk as “much closer to Russia.” Label: Fox’s account of a CNN appearance. This desk did not open the CNN clip.

What this page will not do with a repost

A later upload of the March 27 interview is a later upload. It does not move the interview into October 2026. This desk looked for an X trending summary dated October 19, 2026, and did not open one. A search result pointed at an October 6, 2026 post that quotes the Baier exchange. A direct fetch of that status returned 404, so the post is not used. If the clip is moving around the platform again, the date on the broadcast is still March 27, 2025, and the date on the “You are a traitor” reply, as NBC reported it, is still March 10, 2025.

Label: The absence of a trending page this desk could open. It is not a claim that nobody has reposted the clip.

On the map

DOGE is the government-efficiency record, including the executive order and the reported wind-down. This page is one insult and one television answer. It is not a finding that Sen. Kelly committed treason, and it is not a campaign-finance line. The politics hub is the section.

Sources

Checked October 19, 2026.

The New York Times URL returned no article text. Reuters returned 401. The Hill’s interview story timed out. None of those three is a source for a sentence on this page.