Billionaire Elon Musk has since deleted a post he wrote on the social media platform shortly after the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump on Sunday, saying “No one is even trying to assassinate Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden.”
The owner of X raised eyebrows with his response to an X user who asked, “Why would they want to kill Donald Trump?”
“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden or Kamala,” Musk wrote, adding a thoughtful face emoji.
The reply to X's roughly 200 million followers sparked backlash, with Musk deleting the post hours after the “joke” fell flat.
“One lesson I've learned is just because I say something to a group and they laugh, doesn't mean it's going to be all that funny as a post on X,” Musk posted at 2:58 a.m. ET on Monday.
“We find that jokes are much less funny when they're delivered in plain text, without people knowing the context.”
Musk, a long-time supporter of Trump, first made the remarks after a gunman was seen targeting the Republican presidential candidate on a golf course in Florida.
Jonah Goldberg, co-founder of the conservative media outlet The Dispatch, called Musk's posts “egregious and inexcusable.”
Another user pointed out that Musk's comments were particularly inappropriate because he is a “defence contractor.”
Musk's private company, SpaceX, is a prime contractor for the Department of Defense.
