Elon Musk may soon be getting a visit from the Secret Service for his “joke” about an assassination attempt on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the agency “is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk,” quoting Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service.
“As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees,” Herring told Bloomberg.
Musk posted his threatening musing about an assassination attempt on the president and vice president on Sunday, after a homeless man who had set up camp outside a Donald Trump-owned golf course with an AK-47 was chased away by Secret Service agents and later apprehended and slapped with two federal gun charges.
Musk responded on Twitter to whoever it is that is behind the DogeDesigner account, which had asked the question – “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” – with this:
Musk, who has endorsed Trump, and set up a super PAC that is funneling millions toward the ex-president’s attempt to win a second term, deleted the post, but not before it was seen by tens of millions of people on the social-media site that he purchased in 2022.
He then rather awkwardly – as is his style – tried to walk back the apparent threat to the president and vice president as a joke.
“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,” he wrote on X.
“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text,” he added in another post.
“Jokes”?
The Secret Service is not known for taking these kinds of threats to high-ranking elected officials as “jokes.”
Consider the case that we’ve reported on here at AFP involving Frank Lucio Carillo, 66, of Winchester, about 75 minutes up the road from our home base, who was arrested at his home last month after making thousands of posts in online forums threatening Biden, Harris, FBI Director Christopher Wray and other public officials.
According to investigators, Carillo wrote online, referring to Harris: “I will cut your eyes out of your F***ING head” and “will make sure you suffer a slow agonizing death.”
In another post, he allegedly said he would “personally” set Harris on fire “if no one else does.”
In a third post, Carillo allegedly said Harris is “going to regret ever trying to become president because if that ever happened I will personally pluck out her eyes with a pair of pliers but first I will shoot and kill everyone that gets in my way that is a f***ing promise.”
Carillo’s response, as FBI investigators searched his home:
“For a comment? This is ridiculous, for a comment. I guess I’m gonna need a lawyer.”
Carillo, of course, isn’t the kind of guy who makes billions off federal contracts and has a DoD security clearance and rockets literally at his beck and call, so, yes, he going to need a lawyer, for the foreseeable future, and even that isn’t going to help him all that much.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, if he gets a knock on the door, and that’s a big “if,” he’ll get to amplify his cry of injustice at having to answer a few questions about threatening the president and vice president to his algorithm’s content.
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Chris Graham
