Elon Musk has said he will upgrade his security after a German magazine labeled him an enemy of the people.
Musk held a town hall discussion in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Sunday in support of former President Donald Trump‘s run for office.
While talking to the crowd, the tech billionaire commented on the heightened political atmosphere as the nation approached the November presidential election.
“I’m like, enemy number two of what? Uh, democracy? I mean I’m pro-democracy. I’m literally trying to uphold the Constitution and ensure we have a free and fair election,” Musk said, drawing applause from the crowd.
“I’m definitely upgrading my security. Guess I better cancel that open-car parade,” Musk said, referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The SpaceX CEO said he was a “little shook” by the “level of vitriolic hatred on the left” he had faced.
“They claim they’re tolerant. And yet, they’re incredibly intolerant and spewing hate,” Musk said.
“Whereas on the right I see people who tend to regard people on the left as, well, misguided. But they don’t hate them… but the amount of hate coming from the left is like, wow, next level.”
Former President Trump has survived two assassination attempts – one during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, and another around two months later while he was playing a round of golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Musk officially endorsed Trump over the summer, when the 45th president survived the first assassination attempt, and has since joined the campaign trail in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania to rally support and encourage people to vote.
Trump has said he wants Musk, who paid 44 billion dollars for Twitter which is now valued at nine million dollars, as his Secretary of Cost Cutting.
In October last year, Musk took to X to claim that Scotland’s then First Minister Humza Yousaf was “obviously super racist against white people”.
He has also reposted a number of far right conspiracy theories as fact.
He claimed “civil war is inevitable” in the UK and promoted a conspiracy theory that far-right agitators were treated more harshly than minority groups during a spate of right-wing riots that led to a spate of prison terms.
He has also claimed the democrats are allowing immigrants to flood into the US to help them get more votes and joked that nobody wanted to assassinate Vice President, Kamala Harris.
There have also been calls for him to be investigated over “vote buying” after controversially offering to give one million dollars away every day to random voters who sign his petition backing free speech and the right to bear arms.
“We want to make sure that everyone in swing states hears about [the petition] and I suspect [the cash giveaway] will ensure they do,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who previously served as the state’s attorney-general and is an advocate for vice-president Kamala Harris, said on Sunday that the move was something “law enforcement can take a look at”.
“There are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing — not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians,” he said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “That is deeply concerning.”
Richard Hasen, a legal scholar who specialises in election law, said the pledge from Musk, the world’s richest man, “violates the core ban on vote buying in US federal elections”.
Musk’s security expenses have surged amid increased threats and his rising status but he can afford it.
At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that “two homicidal maniacs” had threatened to kill him in recent months.
He currently travels with up to 20 bodyguards and a medical professional who refer to him by the code name ‘Voyager’.
He is not the only tech tycoon doubling down on security expenditures. Mark Zuckerberg’s total 2023 compensation of $24 million from Meta “consisted almost entirely of costs related to personal security” at his residences and during private travel.
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