White House responds to Biden and Kamala’s post about Elon Musk’s assassination

The White House has responded to an incendiary post on X (formerly Twitter) by its owner Elon Musk, who, following an apparent second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend, suggested it made no sense why there hadn’t also been publicly known attempts on the lives of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In response to a post by another user on the social media platform, which he has owned since 2022, asking “Why do they want to kill Donald Trump?” Elon Musk wrote on Sunday. “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who often tops lists of the world’s richest people, was immediately bombarded by users asking him to remove the post, but he refused. The 53-year-old later wrote in a reply: “No one has even tried to do it, that’s what I mean and no one will.”

After hours of users arguing for Elon Musk to remove the inflammatory post, he was apparently finally convinced by an X-rated post from tech entrepreneur Phil Trubey, who wrote that users seem to enjoy misinterpreting “your obvious intent.”

“That’s true. I don’t want to do what they did, even as a joke,” Musk wrote in response, deleting the initial tweet, which had already been printed 40 million times on his platform.

On Monday, the CEO backtracked, calling the post a joke, which he said he told to a group of people before posting the dangerous statement online: “Well, one lesson I learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be as hilarious as a post on X,” he wrote, later adding, “It turns out jokes are a LOT less funny if people don’t know the context and the message is in plain text.”

On Sunday, a gunman was spotted by Secret Service agents in Florida while Trump was golfing. After shooting the man, he fled in a black Nissan SUV but was quickly apprehended and taken into custody. The FBI said it was investigating the incident as an apparent assassination attempt. It would be the second attempt on Trump’s life after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania this summer.

The White House released a statement Monday regarding Elon Musk’s suggestion that the country’s leaders could be assassinated.

“As President Biden and Vice President Harris said following yesterday’s disturbing news, ‘there is no place for political violence or any other violence in our country,’ and ‘we must all do our part to ensure this incident does not lead to further violence,’” the statement read.

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” the White House added in its statement.

Musk endorsed Trump in July and was promised a position in the former president’s cabinet if he wins the presidency again in November.