Elon Musk, the billionaire king of bad takes, came up with a new one to cement his reign on Sunday night.
Responding to a second potential assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, the X owner questioned why no one was trying to kill the Democratic president and vice president.
“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” he posted, adding a thinking-face emoji.
A near-instantaneous firestorm of criticism predictably followed, with several people telling him to “delete your account” and others tagging the U.S. Secret Service’s X account.
“This is literally incitement,” the grassroots action group DemsMight wrote, while others pointed out that the post was grounds for the revocation of Musk’s government contracts, including a pair of NASA contracts worth roughly $4 billion that his company SpaceX won in 2021.
Others took the opportunity to clown on Musk. “Another example of why your children hate you,” the actor Billy Baldwin observed.
The New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff remarked dryly, “and they say this site has advertising problems.”
The incident in question began Sunday afternoon when a gunman, named in reports as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, allegedly snuck onto the grounds near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, with an AK-47 style rifle.
Secret Service agents noticed the barrel of a gun sticking out from a chain-link fence on the course’s front nine—well within shooting range of the former president, who was putting less than 500 yards away, authorities said. They opened fire, prompting the suspect to flee.
He was later apprehended on Florida’s I-95 in Martin County, thanks to an eagle-eyed witness who snapped a photo of his car before he took off from Trump’s golf course.
Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder said Routh was “relatively calm” and “not displaying a lot of emotions” while being taken into custody.
