Donald Trump talks assassination attempt, return to Butler, Pa., in his X Spaces chat with Elon Musk

Elon Musk told former President Donald Trump that his “strength under fire” during an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., played a part in the billionaire’s decision to endorse the former president.

“Your actions at the assassination attempt were inspiring … instead of shying away from things, instead of ducking down, you were pumping your first in the air and saying, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’” Musk said during a Monday night conversation with Trump on X Spaces, the latest example of Trump favoring social media as a campaign tool.

Pennsylvania was the star of the first chunk of Musk and Trump’s two-hour conversation on the social media platform.

The discussion, which started 42 minutes late after X encountered some technical difficulties, provided a venue for Trump to discuss, among other topics, the assassination attempt and his promise to return to Butler in October.

It also allowed Trump to make false claims about Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats in an environment where his often-rambling comments went unchecked and received little pushback from Musk, who has his own history of spreading misinformation on the app he bought in 2022.

“It’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length,” Trump said at one point during the chat, which Musk intended to be different from an “adversarial interview.”

Musk made his endorsement of Trump on X on July 13, shortly after the assassination attempt that evening. Musk has previously supported Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden’s White House bid in 2020, and said Monday night that he once “stood in line for six hours to shake [former President Barack] Obama’s hand.” But in recent years, Musk has repeatedly espoused rhetoric that aligns closely to Trump and right-wing political movements.

Here’s what Trump said about Pennsylvania during his conversation with Musk and what could have led to the delayed start.

Musk asked Trump about the assassination attempt in Butler. “Not pleasant,” Trump replied.

“I didn’t know I had that much blood. The doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place if you’re going to get hit,” Trump said.

Just as he did during his most recent Pennsylvania rally, in Harrisburg on July 31, Trump recounted to Musk how his head was turned toward a chart that featured “migrant encounter numbers,” according to an ABC News analysis. In presenting the chart, Trump maneuvered his head away from the impending gunfire, perhaps avoiding a more serious or fatal injury.

“Illegal immigration saved my life,” Trump said, referring to the contents of the chart he was presenting in Butler.

Trump marveled that once he was hit and ducked down behind his podium, the rally-goers didn’t leave his side. “They saw that I was hurt, they saw a lot of blood, and they saw that I went down, and it’s almost like they wanted to be with me,” Trump said.

Trump added that the Secret Service agents surrounding him after the attack wanted to bring the former president out on a stretcher, but Trump said he refused the measure.

The former president also mentioned Corey Comperatore, the 50-year-old firefighter who was fatally shot at the rally while shielding his wife and daughter from the gunfire, and the two men, David Dutch of New Kensington, Pa., and James Copenhaver of Moon Township, Pa., who were injured.

Trump said Corey was “a firefighter, a great gentleman, a great Trumper.”

Trump told Musk that he plans to return to Butler, Pa., in October, a comment that comes a little more than two weeks after Trump posted on Truth Social that he would be returning to the town to hold a rally in honor of Comperatore and the two injured men, but did not provide further details.

When Trump initially announced his plans to return to Butler, Jondavid Longo, the mayor of nearby Slippery Rock who attended the rally, said that Trump’s return “will play a vital role in the healing of our community and the elevation of our name above the ugliness of July 13″ and that supporters of the former president won’t be deterred from attending.

The Republican nominee has visited Pennsylvania six times so far in 2024, his most recent being a rally at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg in late July, which was his first time back in the commonwealth since the assassination attempt. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday.

Before Musk and Trump could start their conversation by discussing the assassination attempt, Musk said the platform was experiencing a “massive DDoS attack” that prevented many users from accessing the X Space.

DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attacks happen when legitimate users cannot access information systems, devices, or networks due to a “malicious cyber threat actor,” according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Targeted networks are flooded with activity during an attack, leaving them inaccessible to legitimate users.

Musk has had previous technical difficulties on X Spaces with politicians, but the rest of the website was working normally and the Verge reported there wasn’t a DDoS attack Monday evening, according to a source from the company. Another source told the outlet there was a “‘99 percent’ chance Elon was lying about an attack.”

Musk claimed on X that “we tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today” and said on the call, once the problems were seemingly resolved, that the “massive attack illustrates there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say.”