Major defense contractor Elon Musk suggested in a now-deleted post on social media that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should be targeted for assassinations after the Secret Service foiled what the FBI said was an apparent plot on Donald Trump’s life on Sunday.
In a post on X, Musk quoted a post from a user who asked, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” Musk, adding his own commentary, said, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” with a thinking emoji.
Musk doubled down in a reply to someone telling him to “reconsider” the post, saying, “No one has even tried to do so is the point I’m making and no one will.” This post, unlike the original one, is still up as of Monday morning.
After deleting the post musing about assassinating the president on Sunday, Musk suggested that he was joking. He claimed that there was “context” that users were missing, though left it unclear as to what context would make it a joke, rather than a seeming threat. On Sunday night, he also said in replies to the post that he was making a serious point.
Whether or not he was joking, the post is alarming coming from a man with enormous power who supports the Republican Party, which has been working to radicalize its followers and foment political violence for many years — and who Trump has said he would tap for a cabinet position if he were elected.
It is especially alarming coming from a man with insider knowledge of U.S. defense and security operations. Musk’s SpaceX is a major defense and intelligence contractor, having gotten billions of dollars in federal contracts to support military missions and build a covert network of spy satellites that allow federal officials the ability to monitor nearly the entire globe.
In one post, Musk suggested that he was trying to point out that only Biden and Harris supporters would resort to violence, which is why there have been multiple seeming attempts on Trump’s life. This is patently untrue; research has found that right-wingers are responsible for the vast majority of extremist violence in the U.S., and experts have noted that far right violence is a growing concern as politicians have leaned further right in recent years.
In reality, political assassination attempts are quite common, and are often plotted by right-wing actors — they are just typically foiled by federal officials before the would-be attacker can make it to, for instance, the roof of a nearby Trump rally. Several people, including people who openly identify as Trump supporters, have tried to kill Biden in recent years, but were stopped before they could execute their plans.
Information is still emerging about the armed man who authorities arrested as he was trying to aim a gun into Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he was playing golf on Sunday. In a book written by the suspect, Ryan Routh, about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Routh said he voted for Trump in 2016, but turned against him and wanted Iran to assassinate Trump, The Associated Press reported on Monday.
Routh also emphasized in his book that he was a moderate who didn’t have any allegiance to any particular party. “I get so tired of people asking me if I am a Democrat or Republican as I refuse to be put in a category,” he wrote.
Posts from his X account show that he was a fan of Tulsi Gabbard in 2020 and, this year, was rooting for Republican candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. X and Facebook have both reportedly suspended Routh’s accounts.
Other posts from his X account and bits from his book show that the man was a fervent supporter of Ukraine. The Guardian also interviewed Routh in 2022 as he was in a bustling train station in Poland where many were traveling to Ukraine shortly after Russia’s invasion first started; then, and on social media, Routh stated that he was ready to take up arms to fight for Ukraine.
Trump and his allies also attempted to pin blame for the shooting at a Trump rally in July on Democrats. But that line of attack quickly fizzled out after the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was revealed to have similarly hard-to-label political allegiances as Routh.
While Crooks had once made a small donation to a Democrat-leaning group, he was also registered to vote as a Republican. Probes into his internet searches prior to the shooting showed that he was seemingly looking to kill any high-profile politician, and had done research on both Trump and Biden speaking events.
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