The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, addressed a crowded town hall Saturday in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he downplayed the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and suggested mail ballots were a “recipe for fraud.”
In response to a man who asked Musk what his message was to young voters who worry “that voting for a second Trump presidency will lead to democratic backsliding,” Musk replied, “The media tries to characterize Jan. 6 as some sort of violent insurrection, which is simply not the case,” he said, prompting applause from the crowd. More than 100 law enforcement personnel were injured in the attack, some beaten with their own weapons, when a mob of Trump supporters who believed his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of votes.
“It’s not as though the Jan. 6 protests had no merit, they had some merit,” Musk continued. “I disagree with the magnitude of what they did, but it’s not as though there were no issues,” said Musk.
Musk claimed that people “who say Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy,” a comment that was also received with applause by the crowd of several hundred people packed into the ballroom. Many more watched the event on X, the social media platform Musk purchased two years ago.
Trump, he said, “did actually tell people to not be violent.” While Trump did tell 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 the president.
Musk spent nearly two hours taking questions from town hall participants. The freewheeling session inside a ballroom at a hotel in downtown Lancaster touched on a dizzying range of topics, from space exploration and the Tesla cybertruck 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. Trump has said he’d give Musk a role in his administration if he wins the presidency.
Musk was largely praised by the town hall crowd as a visionary and solicited for advice and thoughts about education, arm wrestling, tax loopholes and whether he’d buy the Chicago White Sox. (He said he was a tech guy and had to pick his battles.) Trump won Lancaster County in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and he won Pennsylvania in 2016 against Hillary Clinton but lost it in 2020 to Joe Biden.
Musk said he was in favor of “not heavy handed” regulation of artificial intelligence and railed against “woke religion” as “fundamentally an extinctionist religion.” He said the U.S. birth rate is a significant 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’s ever received, replied: “I recommend studying physics.”
Musk, the world’s richest man, has committed more than $70 million to boost Trump in the election and, at events on behalf of his super PAC, has encouraged supporters to embrace voting early. Still, echoing some of Trump’s misgivings about the method, Musk raised his own doubts about the process. He called mail ballots “a strange anomaly that got popularized during COVID,” and he went on to say of mail voting that “really, you have an obvious recipe for fraud and inability to prove fraud.”
Samuel Corum / Getty Images
There are a number of safeguards to protect mail-in ballots, with various ballot verification protocols, including every state requiring a voter’s signature.
He also called town hall participant Judey Kamora to the stage to give her a large $1 million check, part of his promotion to give away $1 million a day to a voter in a swing state who has signed his super PAC’s petition backing the U.S. Constitution.
Musk made no mention of the Justice Department’s recent warning that his $1 million sweepstakes could violate federal election law. Nor did he comment on a Wall Street Journal report that the tech billionaire has maintained regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The giveaways are just fine with Josh Fox, 32, a UPS driver from Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.
“That’s cool,” Fox said, waiting to get into the rally earlier Saturday. “It would be nice to have it.”
Fox, who plans to vote for Trump, dismissed any suggestion the money may violate federal election rules.
“It’s about driving in support and driving in people who are in support of the Constitution,” Fox said.
contributed to this report.
