Elon Musk talked crime and immigration in Delco on Thursday as his pro-Trump efforts intensify in Pennsylvania

Standing in all black before a large American flag, Elon Musk — the world’s richest man — visited a Delaware County high school Thursday to stump for Donald Trump’s campaign and cast an apocalyptic view of America under Democratic control.

Musk started speaking at Ridley High School in Folsom more than an hour after he was scheduled to, and delivered brief and fear-stoking remarks about street crime — specifically near the campus of his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania — and illegal immigration.

He walked onto stage to thunderous applause from the crowd, dotted with red Trump “MAGA” hats, and many in attendance shouted cheers of encouragement — and, at one moment, an expletive about Vice President Kamala Harris — during the billionaire tech executive’s remarks.

In an appearance that lasted a little over an hour, Musk offered a dour view of American life if Trump is not elected. He lambasted President Joe Biden’s administration and its handling of the immigration crisis and the southern U.S. border, and cast himself as a defender of the Constitution.

The visit was the first in a series of town halls Musk is holding across Pennsylvania through Monday. He’ll have a town hall in Montgomery County on Friday as the focus on the populous collar counties ramps up in the final weeks of the campaign.

Late in the presidential campaign season, Musk has emerged as a major backer of Trump’s campaign, donating nearly $75 million to his own America PAC, which fuels Trump voter mobilization efforts.

The event had some hometown appeal.

Speaking to his personal connection to Pennsylvania, Musk told the audience that he had spent three years in Philadelphia during his time attending the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in the late 1990s and that he “knew Pennsylvania well.”

“I lived in the city for three years, I went to school here,” Musk said. “I know the state — I’m not some just-arrived situation.”

Delco residents lined up outside Ridley High School hours before Musk’s arrival.

As school let out, high school students buzzed about the appearance; outside the entrance, some young male students goaded one another with laughter as they waved Trump-Vance flags.

Elizabeth Chartier, 28, a registered Republican who plans to vote for Harris in November but wanted to attend the event to hear Musk firsthand, said she’s not convinced Musk — who has a net worth of nearly $250 billion — will resonate with everyday Pennsylvania voters.

“I feel like the biggest thing is like the middle class and their woes, and Elon is so far removed from the middle-class experience in life,” said Chartier, of Ridley Park. “I don’t know. Unless he’s got a really good PR team to tell him what things middle-class people want to hear, I still think it’ll come off disingenuous.”

Musk later blamed Democratic policies for what he described as Mad Max-style crime in the country’s major cities, and told audience members that their power would be greatly diminished if the government enacted gun-control measures. He railed against mounting spending within the federal government and the criminal justice system.

“The situation we have here is that the Democratic Party will not put hardened criminals in prison, and so they run free and they prey upon you and your kids,” Musk said.

“The Second Amendment is there to protect the First Amendment,” Musk later added.

And to the X owner, these viewpoints, he said, are just “common sense.”

His pro-Trump voter mobilization message ahead of Monday’s registration deadline accompanied disinformation and conspiracy theories about U.S. elections. Musk expressed his advocacy for paper ballots and the hand-counting of votes.

Musk later addressed multiple questions about his proposed “Department of Governmental Efficiency” — or D.O.G.E, a winking reference to the much-memed cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

The tech executive has suggested that he would help audit the federal government under a second Trump administration to eliminate wasteful spending, and called for curtailing federal regulations on corporations. Musk has teased his D.O.G.E concept on X in recent weeks, and the idea has earned praise in some online Trump circles.

“If they waste your money … they should be fired,” Musk said of federal officials.

To participate in Thursday’s town hall, members of the public had to be registered to vote and sign a petition that, in part, pledges their allegiance to the First and Second Amendment.

The sign-up requirement raised some red flags, though. It was “likely illegal” because in a federal election, a person cannot give something of value in exchange for an agreement to vote, wrote Richard Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, in a post on the Election Law Blog.

“It is not necessary to offer that a person vote for or against a particular candidate. … Just like one cannot give out free ice cream or car washes or concert tickets, one cannot give out free admission to hear a speech by a tech entrepreneur,” he wrote.

Hasen’s assessment was based on one of Musk’s posts on X where he said attendees must have voted in Pennsylvania to be granted event access. The general attendee sign-up sheet does not indicate that participants must have voted, but that they are registered to vote.

“It’s inconsistent with what Musk wrote in his tweet, but one cannot provide a benefit for someone to register to vote either,” Hasen said in a statement to The Inquirer.