(Tom Gantert, The Center Square) Elon Musk sounded off on the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump as he posted on Twitter that he was endorsing Trump and was highly critical of the Secret Service charged with protecting him.
“Extreme incompetence or it was deliberate,” Musk posted on Twitter, responding to another comment on X that stated about the shooter, “He was a sniper with a full rifle kit allowed to bear crawl onto the closest roof to a presidential nominee.”
Then Musk, who owns the social media platform Twitter and has 189.6 million followers, posted, “Either way, the SS leadership must resign.”
Trump survived an assassination attempt Saturday when he was shot in the ear by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Musk mocked Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the United States Secret Service. Musk posted a biography of Cheatle that stated before her appointment to the Secret Service, she was senior director of Global Security at PepsiCo.
“So, before being put in charge of protecting the PRESIDENT, she was guarding bags of Cheetos …” Musk posted.
PepsiCo is the parent company of Cheetos.
“The head of the Secret Service and the leader of this security detail should resign,” Musk tweeted in response to a BBC clip on X that had an eyewitness claiming he informed police and the Secret Service about a suspicious man on a roof with a rifle.
Musk posted, “Exactly” on X to another post that had a video of the dead sniper on the rooftop that asked, “How the hell was such an obvious line of sight not secured?”
Musk also reposted a tweet about an exchange a day earlier between Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, at an event in Idaho.
According to multiple news sites, the day before the assassination attempt, Thiel sarcastically thanked Hoffman at an event for helping fund the lawsuits against Trump, saying they turned the former president into “a martyr.”
Hoffman was on the stage and responded to Thiel by saying, “Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr.”
“The Reid Hoffman’s of the world got their dearest wish … but the martyr lived,” Musk posted.
Musk’s first post on the assassination attempt stated, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”
