LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) – Technology mogul Elon Musk spoke at a Pennsylvania town hall Saturday evening in support of Republican Donald Trump, downplaying the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and urging his supporters to cast their votes early in the presidential swing as he describes mail-in ballots as a “recipe for fraud.”
The freewheeling session in a hotel ballroom in downtown Lancaster covered a dizzying array of topics, from space exploration and the Tesla cyber truck to immigration and the efficacy of psychiatric drugs. The town hall was part of Musk’s efforts through his super PAC to help boost Trump in swing states ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election against Democrat Kamala Harris.
Musk, who Trump has pledged to play a role in his administration if he wins next month, spent nearly two hours answering questions from town hall participants. While most were laudatory and covered a variety of topics, one was particularly pointed: One man wanted to know what Musk would say about voters’ concerns that Trump’s election could lead to a setback of democracy in the U.S., given his role in the elections of January 6, 2021. , uprising.
While calling it a fair question, Musk also said the Jan. 6 attack was called “some kind of violent insurrection by Trump’s supporters, which is simply not the case” — a response that drew applause from the crowd. Enforcement personnel were injured in the attack, some struck with their own weapons, as a mob of Trump supporters who believed his lies that the 2020 election had been stolen from him stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of votes.
Musk also claimed that people “who say Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy,” a comment that was also cheered by the crowd of several hundred people packed tightly into the ballroom. Many more people watched the event on X, the social media platform Musk bought two years ago.
Trump, he said, “has actually told people not to be violent.” While Trump told the crowd on Jan. 6 to protest “peacefully and patriotically,” he also encouraged them to “fight like hell” to stop Democrat Joe Biden from becoming president.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has pledged more than $70 million to boost Trump in the election and has encouraged supporters to vote early at events on behalf of his super PAC. Yet, echoing some of Trump’s doubts about the method, Musk expressed his own doubts about the process. He said mail-in ballots should not be accepted in the future. He called them a strange anomaly that became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and raised the prospect of fraud.
There are a number of safeguards in place to protect mail-in ballots, with varying vote verification protocols, with each state requiring a voter’s signature.
The question about Jan. 6 was an outlier during the back-and-forth with the crowd in which Musk was repeatedly praised as a visionary and asked for advice and thoughts on education, arm wrestling, tax loopholes and whether he would buy the Chicago. White Sox. (He said he was a techie and had to pick his battles.)
Musk said he was in favor of “not heavy-handed” regulation of artificial intelligence and denounced the “woke religion” as “fundamentally a dying religion.” He said the U.S. birth rate is a major concern.
He said he believes Jesus was a real person who lived about 2,000 years ago, and when asked for the best advice he ever received, he replied, “I recommend studying physics.”
He also called a woman to the stage to present her with a large check for $1 million, part of his promotion to give away $1 million a day to a voter in a swing state who supported his super PAC’s petition signed the US Constitution.
The giveaways are great for Josh Fox, 32, a UPS driver from Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.
“That’s cool,” Fox said as he waited to join the rally earlier Saturday. “It would be nice to have it.”
Fox, which plans to vote for Trump, rejected any suggestion that the money could violate federal election rules.
“It’s about galvanizing support and galvanizing people to support the Constitution,” Fox said.
