Ali Condon
Elon Musk definitely won't 'be doing any open air car parades' any time soon, after claiming that he things the risk of his assassination is 'quite significant'.
The Tesla founder admitted his fears to followers during a two-hour Q&A session on Twitter Spaces this weekend.
When you sit and think about it, there are plenty of details about Elon that could put him at risk, from his 'world's richest man' status to his controversial $44 billion Twitter takeover complete with mass lay-offs, to his hardcore free speech ideals that gave people like Kanye West and Donald Trump their platforms back, and ended Twitter's policy against Covid-19 misinformation. I could be here all day.
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"Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant", Elon told the 1.1 million accounts that tuned in to his Twitter Spaces session.
"It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t, and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen … There’s definitely some risk there."
In fact, during the live discussion, Elon might just have added some new people to his list of enemies after unveiling what he has been calling 'Twitter Files'.
The dramatic reveal, which Elon had been teasing all week, was simply a discussion about some internal Twitter documents that were released by journalist Matt Taibbi in a Twitter thread.
Some of the files detailed a Twitter cover-up of specific content just weeks before Joe Biden was elected president.
Elon himself confirmed what Matt Taibbi's thread suggested: Joe Biden's team had instructed Twitter staff to remove any posts about the contents of Joe Biden's son Hunter's laptop ahead of the election.
"If Twitter is doing one team’s bidding before an election shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, that is the definition of election interference," argued Musk, who recently shared that he's leaning towards Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential election.
"Frankly, Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee, it was absurd."
Slamming Twitter's previous bosses, Elon continued: "This is not a North Korea tour guide situation, you get to go anywhere you want, whenever you want, however you want. I'm not controlling the narrative."
Hinting that he had plans to release more information in 'episode two' of Twitter Files, he explained: "The idea here is to come clean on everything that has happened in the past in order to build public trust for the future."
And, just to reiterate, is Elon should disappear under 'mysterious circumstances', he wants his followers to question everything.
"I do not have any suicidal thoughts. If I committed suicide, it's not real", he assured viewers.
That's sure to keep the conspiracy theorists busy for a little while.