LANCASTER,Pa (AP)– Tech magnate Elon Musk, talking at a city center Saturday evening in Pennsylvania to sustain Republican Donald Trump, soft-pedaled the Jan. 6 attack on the UNITED STATE Capitol and exhorted fans to cast ballots early in the governmental swing state while explaining mail tallies as a “recipe for fraud.”
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.
Musk, whom Trump has vowed to give a role in his administration if he wins next month, spent nearly two hours taking questions from town hall participants. While most were laudatory and covered a variety of topics, one was particularly pointed: A man wanted to know what Musk would say to concerns from voters that Trump’s election could lead to democracy backsliding in the U.S. considering his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
While calling it a fair question, Musk also said that the Jan. 6 attack by Trump’s supporters has been called “some sort of violent insurrection, which is simply not the case” — a response that drew 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.
Musk also claimed that people “who say Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy,” a remark that was additionally applauded by the group of numerous hundred individuals loaded snugly right into the ballroom. Many a lot more viewed the occasion on X, the social networks system Musk acquired 2 years back.
Trump, he claimed, “did actually tell people to not be violent.” While Trump did tell the crowd on Jan. 6 to protest “peacefully and patriotically,” he additionally encouraged them to “fight like hell” to quit Democrat Joe Biden from coming to be the head of state.
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 said that, in the future, mail ballots should not be accepted, calling them a strange anomaly that got popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic and raising the prospect of fraud.
