Billionaire entrepreneur and social media maven Elon Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening following the apparent assassination attempt on the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted on his social media platform X, embedding a video of Trump pumping his fist moments after the shooting.
The likely assassination attempt took place at 6:15 p.m. Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 33 miles north of Pittsburgh. 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 Saturday night.
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 the gun before the shooting. The rallygoer says in the video that he told police, but nothing appeared to be done about it.
“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” from the Secret Service, suggesting the alternative was that not catching the shooter before he opened fire “was deliberate. Either way, the [Secret Service] leadership must resign.”
In a post sharing a photo and brief biography of the current Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle, Musk poked fun at her qualifications. Before taking over at head of Secret Service, Cheatle served as the senior director in Global Security at PepsiCo.
“So before being put in charge of protecting the PRESIDENT, she was guarding bags of Cheetos …,” Must wrote.
The X owner also suggested that the likely assassination attempt made Trump a political “martyr.”
“The Reid Hoffman’s of the world got their dearest wish … but then the martyr lived.”
According to Forbes, Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder, funded E. Jean Carroll’s prosecution against former President Donald Trump through a nonprofit that Democrat donors support.
Musk’s reference was to a recent spat between Hoffman and Peter Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal and a Trump supporter, in which Thiel mockingly thanked Reid for making Trump a “martyr.”
“Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr,” Hoffman reportedly retorted.