Shots Fired, Elon Musk Heard a Call: Donald Trump
Weekend of raw emotions helped fuel the master of meme’s entry into the political fray
By Tim Higgins, WSJ
July 15, 2024 5:30 am ET
Elon Musk has said he was against President Biden but not until this weekend did he publicly endorse Donald Trump. The failed assassination attempt of Donald Trump flipped a switch in Elon Musk.
For months, Musk had loudly voiced worries about the direction of the nation. He derided President Biden but had yet to come out in direct support of Trump’s latest bid to return to the White House.
Then the shots rang out Saturday evening. And as we all struggled to understand what we had just seen, Musk didn’t hesitate. He swiftly left no doubt over his position, posting on the X platform with the kind of emotions and frequency that have endeared him to many, and turned off others.
Trump was his guy.
With his endorsement of the former president, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX tapped into his power source on social media—posting throughout the weekend with a whole range of feelings and facts, or lack thereof.
After years of online feuds, Musk is a master of the memes, shaping narratives and rallying his echoverse to his cause—and, Trump would hope, to vote. As Musk has said, “Who controls the memes, Controls the Universe.”
Even his endorsement tweet Saturday carried hues of the day’s major meme: a 12-second video of Trump, bloodied after the attack, surrounded by Secret Service agents, rising up with his clenched fist to mouth: Fight, fight, fight. Followed by the swelling cheers of the rally attendees in Butler, Pa., as they realized Trump not only survived but was defiant.
The meme evoked the image of the Marines raising the U.S. flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Except it was Trump, battling the day’s dark forces.
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote.
His post came roughly 30 minutes after the episode as the nation was still watching the replays of the harrowing scene.
Whatever we were processing, it was obviously historic.
We will never know what was going through the minds of the attendees in real-time at the Ford’s Theatre as they watched in the wake of Abraham Lincoln getting shot in 1865. Or how the crowd immediately felt after Theodore Roosevelt took a bullet during his campaign stop in Milwaukee in 1912.
But, fittingly, we do in 2024: The social-media platform X, which helped give voice to the rise of Trump the politician, reacted in real-time. And there wasn’t a better proxy for how many were feeling in those minutes and hours afterward than Musk, who acquired Twitter-turned-X in late 2022.
A true American experience, blasted to his almost 200 million followers. At first, we saw a burst of patriotism and support for Trump, then a turn toward anger and blame and finally a descent into conspiracy theories.
“Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” Musk tweeted as it became clear Trump would be OK.
This weekend was also the latest chapter in a complicated relationship between Musk and Trump.
Just a few years ago, Musk was advocating for a younger generation to seek the White House.
When it became clear that November’s contest would be between Trump, 78 years old, and Biden, 81, Musk apparently turned pragmatic. In recent months, Musk and Trump had been burying their disagreements amid private calls and sharing ideas for immigration, technology and science, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
“I have had some conversations with him,” Musk said this past month at Tesla’s shareholder meeting. “He does call me out of the blue for no reason.”
Musk seemed pulled toward Trump by his distaste for Biden and his growing worries about the overall state of society, which in his view is infected with what he calls the woke mind virus. That phrase is Musk’s shorthand for liberal ideas that he blames for allowing illegal immigration to grow unchecked and what he describes as the misguided embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Then Saturday happened, as if to only solidify Musk’s concerns that we are all on the wrong path.
Musk quickly amplified tweets that highlighted the conservative voices of Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy warning earlier that Trump might be in danger in an environment of divisiveness that sought to demonize him.
“Dangerous times ahead,” Musk cautioned roughly two hours after Trump was rushed off the rally stage.
In those hours after the attack, X, like other platforms, became the dumping ground for raw emotions, legitimate observations and wild ideas.
Some without evidence suggested Trump staged the shooting for his political benefit, others blamed the media and many drew parallels with 50 Cent’s song “Many Men (Wish Death)” about the rapper surviving a shooting, as if his political campaign had a new anthem.
Musk joined with others in latching on to criticism of the Secret Service— “Major fail” as he called it—and retweeted a BBC interview with a man claiming to have warned authorities about a suspicious man with a rifle on a nearby roof before the shooting.
“The head of the Secret Service and the leader of this security detail should resign,” Musk concluded.
The Secret Service has said Trump was given additional security for campaign trips and the incident was being investigated.
As the evening went on, Musk, like many, began to speculate about how things could have gone so wrong. He engaged with a favorite X account, dubbed Wall Street Silver, that wrote: “This really is looking bad for the Secret Service. Was it lack of manpower to cover that roof? Or was it an inside job where it was left open?”
Musk responded: “Lack of manpower does not explain it. Bystanders tried to point out the sniper to security (in a very obvious location) for minutes before the shooting.”
And he weighed in on another wild rumor that Trump, after being injured, would attend a UFC fight in Denver. “That would be next-level,” he tweeted. (Trump didn’t attend.)
Then Musk reposted another user: “I always thought Trump was a vapid showman. Impressive to see the dog in him. Changes everything.”
As the night dragged on, Musk joined others in turning his attention to the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle. In 2022, she returned to run the Secret Service after having left the agency following 27 years to take a job at PepsiCo, according to her official biography.
“So before being in charge of protecting the President, she was guarding bags of Cheetos…” Musk asked in response to a screenshot of that bio. Then, in the early hours of Sunday, Musk amplified a tweet saying Cheatle had been focused in her job as Secret Service leader on making diversity hires.
Around the same time, conservative personality Chaya Raichik, known as the creator of the Libs TikTok account on the other social-media platform, tweeted out: “Who else can’t sleep.”
To which Musk responded: “Same.”
Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com
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