Billionaire businessman Elon Musk said President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been safe from assassination attempts because "they are just puppets of the system."
Musk elaborated on his stance after deleting a comment he had posted on X shortly after former President Donald Trump on Sunday was the target of a second assassination attempt. The Tesla and Space X CEO had questioned why "no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala."
"My point is that, over the course of four years in power, no one has tried to assassinate Biden or Kamala and no one will, because they are just puppets of the system and will simply be replaced by another puppet who reads what's on the teleprompter," Musk wrote in a message to the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Trump differs from Biden or Harris because he is not simply a "puppet" who can be replaced, Musk added.
The billionaire deleted his X post after being rebuked by platform users.
"Well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's going to be all that hilarious as a post on X," Musk later wrote on X.
"Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don't know the context and the delivery is plain text," he added.
The Secret Service was among those who took note of Musk's since-deleted X post after the second assassination attempt on Trump in little more than two months.
"The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence," the Secret Service said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
"We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees."
On Monday, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, expressed a sentiment similar to Musk's comments.
"I know it's popular on a lot of corners of the Left to say that we have a both sides problem. And I'm not going to say we're always perfect. I'm not going to say that conservatives always get things exactly right," Vance told the Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition dinner in Atlanta.
"But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have — no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months."