Secret Service says they are ‘aware’ of Elon Musk’s ‘Biden/Kamala’ post
The U.S. Secret Service has acknowledged being “aware” of a now-deleted X (formerly Twitter) post made by Elon Musk that mentioned assassination attempts on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“[Secret Service] is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk. As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees,” a spokesperson for the Secret Service, told Bloomberg.
Musk, who initially posted the message as a joke, later removed it. Now, Secret Service has collected records of the post “for law enforcement purposes,” noting that these records are exempt from open records laws due to ongoing “enforcement proceedings.”
What Musk actually posted?
The controversy began after the Tesla boss responded to a social media post on his platform X regarding threats against former US President Donald Trump. When a user had posted, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” to which Musk replied, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” adding a thinking face emoji.
After deleting the controversial post, Musk followed up with an explanation, “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,”
Followed by another post, Musk added, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”
Musk has always been a vocal supporter of Trump and has increased his amplification of Trump’s messaging on X since purchasing the platform. He even endorsed Trump after he survived the first assassination attempt in July.
Notably, the Secret Service is under scrutiny for another recent incident in which a gunman was hiding in the bushes at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course on Sunday. However, the ex-prez lauded the agency for doing an “excellent job” handling the situation. “I was playing golf with some of my friends on a Sunday morning and very peaceful, very beautiful weather … and all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five, and it sounded like bullets,” Trump recalled during Monday Night X Space.