Musk calls for people to register to vote

In his first appearance with Donald Trump on the campaign trail, billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday called on people to register to vote as he cast Democrats as a threat to democracy.

“Register to vote, OK? And get everyone you know and everyone you don’t know. Drag them to register to vote. There’s only two days left to register to vote in Georgia and Arizona. Forty-eight hours. Text people now. Now. And then make sure they actually do vote,” Musk said at the former president’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “If they don’t, this will be the last election. That’s my prediction.”

The claim made by Musk sounded much like the warnings frequently said by allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden about Trump. But it is the former president, not Democrats, who spoke to a crowd prior to the insurrection at the US Capitol on the January 6, 2021, and then was inactive for more than three hours as the events unfolded there.

The billionaire owner of X and high-profile Trump backer used his appearance onstage Saturday to argue that the 2024 presidential race is no ordinary campaign and that Trump’s opponents “wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote effectively.”

Musk, who endorsed Trump over the summer and helped form a super PAC that already has spent tens of millions on the presidential race, painted a bleak picture of the stakes of the election, arguing that free speech in America as well as the preservation of the Constitution will happen only if Trump beats Harris.

Musk’s comments were something of a digression from the overall theme of Trump’s rally in Butler, the site of a failed assassination attempt against the former president this summer. In his first visit to the site since then, Trump made a point of noting the location of the rally and early on his speech, paying tribute to Corey Contempore, a firefighter who was fatally shot at the rally. Trump also thanked Secret Service for protecting him.

“Exactly 12 weeks ago this evening, on this very ground, a cold-blooded assassin aimed to silence me and to silence the greatest movement,” Trump said.

The speaker list was more high profile than a usual Trump rally. Speakers ahead of the former president included his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as well as son Eric Trump, RNC co-chairwoman and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and conservative activist Scott Presler. During a moment of silence in tribute to the victims at the previous Trump rally in Butler, opera singer Christopher Macchio sang “Ave Maria.”

During the rally, Trump said his supporters deserve a government that does not answer to special interests or lobbyists and that his opponents were actively trying to block this goal.

“Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot – and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me?” Trump baselessly suggested. “But I’ve never stopped fighting for you and I never will.”

After the attempt on his life at his Florida golf club last month, Trump sought to blame Biden and Harris for the second assassination attempt and claimed, “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at.”

Law enforcement officials are still investigating the motives of the suspects in both assassination attempts, and there is no evidence Trump’s political opponents are involved in any manner.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Shania Shelton contributed to this story.