When police escorted him to the office of the attorney general on Wednesday, the far-right Romanian populist Calin Georgescu did not look anything like the steely hero he likes to present himself as on social media.

Five hours later, when Georgescu emerged, he flashed a triumphant smile before balancing on his crutches to show the same gesture that South African billionaire Elon Musk recently shocked the world with. First, he placed his right palm over his heart, then he extended his arm into what can only be interpreted as a Nazi salute.

Shortly before the incident, Musk had posted on his social media platform X that authorities had "arrested the person who won the most votes in the Romanian presidential election."

This was incorrect — Georgescu hadn't been arrested but taken in for questioning. But the false claim was still read by 17.9 million viewers in a matter of hours.

This was just the most recent incident in a drawn-out controversy over Romania's 2024 presidential election which the country's constitutional court had surprisingly canceled in December, just two days before the final round of voting. At the time, the far-right, pro-Russian candidate Georgescu had been the front-runner in the race.

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After interrogating him........

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