Elon Musk deletes X “joke” about Kamala Harris assassination

Elon Musk rushed to delete a “joke” about Kamala Harris being assassinated on his platform X/Twitter after receiving widespread backlash.

The comment came in response to a user on the platform who asked “Why [do] they want to kill Donald Trump?” after the FBI reported an assassination attempt was made at the Republican presidential candidate’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. This was the second assassination attempt in just a few months, after Trump was shot at during a Pennsylvania rally in July.

Musk then wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”

After the post was swiftly deleted, Musk shared more posts attempting to explain himself.

“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,” Musk said. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text,” he added later.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 16, 2024

The White House then released a statement criticising Musk’s “irresponsible” rhetoric.

“As President Biden and Vice President Harris said after yesterday’s disturbing news, ‘There is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,’ and ‘We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,’” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said [via CNBC]. “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible.”

In other news, a new book claims that the tech billionaire once took a baby name he pickedwith Grimes and, instead, gave it to a secret child he had with tech executive Shivon Zilis.

Yesterday (September 13), Business Insider interviewed writers Kate Conger and Ryan Mac to promote the book ‘Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter’, which releases on September 17.

Conger and Mac brought up the information, which will be covered in the book. “Elon and Grimes had picked out a name for their daughter that they wanted to use,” Conger said. “That name ended up being used for one of Shivon Zilis’ twins with Elon.”

In September 2022, Grimes shared words that read like lyrics for a song – Conger claims that these were written after the ‘Miss Anthropocene’ artist had learned “about the name essentially being stolen from her.”

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