Billionaire entrepreneur and social media maven Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump on Saturday evening following the assassination attempt on the former president at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted on his social media platform X about 35 minutes later, embedding a video of Trump pumping his fist moments after the shooting.
The assassination attempt took place at 6:11 p.m. Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, 33 miles north of Pittsburgh, only five days before Trump is set to accept the Republican nomination for president for a third time.
The pops of a gun could be heard as Trump ducked to the floor of the stage and at least six Secret Service agents rushed to shield the former president.
In a statement after he was treated at a nearby medical facility, Trump said he “was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” Musk wrote on X at 6:59 p.m.
Musk also shared a short video of a BBC News interview with a rally attendee who claims to have seen the shooter on a roof with a rifle before shots were heard. The rallygoer says in the video that he told police, but nothing appeared to be done about it.
Authorities said they shot and killed the gunman, but as of midnight had not identified him or supplied many details.
“The head of the Secret Service and the leader of [Trump’s] security detail should resign,” Musk wrote in the X post sharing the BBC video.
Musk blamed the shooting on “extreme incompetence” by the Secret Service, suggesting the only alternative explanation was that not catching the shooter before he opened fire “was deliberate.”
“Either way,” Musk wrote, “the [Secret Service] leadership must resign.”
In a post sharing a photo and brief biography of the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, Musk poked fun at her qualifications.
Before taking over as head of the Secret Service in September 2022, Cheatle was senior director of global security for PepsiCo Inc., known for snacks and beverages.
“So before being put in charge of protecting the PRESIDENT, she was guarding bags of Cheetos … ,” Musk wrote.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, also suggested that the assassination attempt made Trump a political “martyr.”
“The Reid Hoffman’s [sic] of the world got their dearest wish … but then the martyr lived,” he wrote.
Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, funded E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Trump through a nonprofit that Democrat donors support, Forbes reported.
Musk’s reference was to a recent spat between Hoffman and Peter Thiel, former CEO of PayPal and a Trump supporter, in which Thiel mockingly thanked Hoffman for making Trump a “martyr.”
“Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr,” Hoffman reportedly retorted.
