Tech millionaire with security clearance put the query on X and removed it.
Elon Musk tweeted something on X he subsequently regretted hours after the FBI captured an AK-47-wielding guy outside Mar-a-Lago.
“No one is trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk said in a deleted post.
It was irrational and reactive, as many people post after a terrible news item. An irrational thing anybody might say without thinking. Musk, however, is special. He makes a lot from government contracts. Has security clearance. This kind of post usually results in the poster losing clearance rights during a clearance review.
“I had a security clearance for most of my adult life. If I had said something like this, I would’ve lost it instantly. And yet this guy is still a major government contractor,” Tom Nichols, a retired professor of the U.S. Naval War College turned The Atlantic contributor, said in a post on X.
Musk saw it as a joke. “I’ve learnt that a funny comment in a group may not translate well to a post on 𝕏,” he said in a follow-up post. “Jokes are WAY less funny without context and in plain text.”
Musk has compromised his security clearance before by doing foolish crap in public. The Pentagon evaluated SpaceX CEO’s clearance in 2019 after he smoked cannabis on Joe Rogan. After the Wall Street Journal reported his drug usage, the Pentagon re-examined his clearance in 2024.
Musk kept posting on X as the world learnt about Trump’s assassination attempt. He wrote, “The Carousel of destiny spins ever faster,” at 3:49 a.m. EST.
By 5 a.m., he was publishing banal pronatalist stuff. Musk tweeted, “Wow, almost twice as many people died as there were babies born in Greece,” retweeting serial fabulist Mario Nawfal’s article on Europe’s falling population.
Musk’s timeline mended but rotted.
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