Astrid Lund - Betty MacDonald fan club organizer: "Does Elon Musk think before he tweets? After this tasteless post, we can answer the question with 'no'. He now claims it was meant to be a joke and is surprised that no one could laugh about it. Elon Musk now writes completely without irony: "The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats must stop." He is twisting the facts: the opposite is the case!"

Astrid Lund - Betty MacDonald fan club organizer: "Does Elon Musk think before he tweets? After this tasteless post, we can answer the question with 'no'. He now claims it was meant to be a joke and is surprised that no one could laugh about it. Elon Musk now writes completely without irony: "The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats must stop." He is twisting the facts: the opposite is the case!"----------------------------------------------- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Call for assassination? That was meant to be a joke, says Elon Musk Article by Nina Rehfeld • 4 hours • 2 minutes reading time Does he think before he tweets? Elon Musk. Shortly after the second attempted attack on Donald Trump, the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world casually called for further violence. "And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala," Elon Musk told his nearly 198 million followers, accompanied by a thoughtful emoji. The statement, which can be interpreted as a call for assassination, remained on X for nine hours and was seen by at least 30 million people. Within an hour, as CNBC reports, 1.3 million users had seen the post, which had been forwarded 3,300 times and had received 18,000 likes. Call for assassination? That was meant to be a joke, says Elon Musk "A lesson I learned" Then Musk deleted the post and apologized cautiously: "Well, a lesson I learned is that just because a group laughs at something I said doesn't mean it's particularly funny as a post on X," he wrote, and shortly afterwards: "As it turns out, jokes are MUCH less funny when you don't know the context and the delivery is done with text." The fifty-three-year-old, who recently posted a link to an interview between Tucker Carlson and a Holocaust denier and then deleted it again, couldn't wriggle out of it. Horror had already spread in the American media. The media magazine "Poynter" judged under the headline "Hey Elon, assassination jokes aren't funny" that the tweet was not just disgusting and embarrassing like the comment posted shortly before about Taylor Swift's self-description as a "childless cat lady" ("I will give you a child and defend your cats with my life"), but "dangerous". "Business Insider" said that people were slowly "running out of words for Elon Musk and his terrible tweets". It was widely reported that the Secret Service was "aware" of the tweet; the White House called the tweet "irresponsible". "Elon Musk is a national security risk," wrote the tech magazine "Wired", referring to his extensive cooperation with the Department of Defense and his "potential to inspire further political violence". The paper quoted extremism researcher Jon Lewis as saying that extremists were waiting for a justification to use political violence, and "such rhetoric is the perfect excuse." The AP news agency wrote that experts and election officials feared that Musk could "influence people to question the legitimacy of the election" and that "his words could motivate threats and violence against election officials and candidates." X also received criticism; the term "DeportElonMusk" trended on the platform. Musk, a native of South Africa, the richest man in the world with a fortune of more than $200 billion and a Trump supporter, sells himself as an "absolute free speech activist." After deleting his assassination post, Musk wrote with no irony at all: "The incitement of hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats must stop."