Elon Musk says a post he wrote and later deleted amid a firestorm of criticism on Sunday was meant as a joke.
Reacting to the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the Tesla billionaire responded to a post asking why people want to kill the former president. “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote, adding a thinking-face emoji.
The condemnation was swift. Grassroots political groups DemsMight called the post “literally incitement.” Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg slammed Musk’s take as “appalling and indefensible,” while former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) advised the billionaire to “get help,” adding that his tweet was “unhinged and dangerous.”
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“Every time you think this guy could not be more irresponsible, he outdoes himself,” wrote David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to Barack Obama. “What a dangerous, asinine thing to post.”
As the backlash raged, Musk replied to one user who’d encouraged him to delete and reword the post because “people like misinterpreting your obvious intent.” “Fair enough,” Musk wrote. “I don’t want to do what they have done, even in jest.”
After removing the offending post, Musk followed up with a couple more apparently attempting to justify his actions as an attempt at humor that went awry.
“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” Musk wrote. In another tweet, he added: “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”
Musk has previously faced criticism for his interventions in the aftermath of political violence.
After a hammer-wielding intruder attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in their home in San Francisco in October 2022, Musk shared a link to an article that pushed a baseless conspiracy theory claiming Paul had gotten into a fight with a male sex worker. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk claimed at the time.
He later deleted the post and, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson, privately described the episode as “one of his dumbest mistakes.”
