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Elon Musk says people accusing Trump of endangering democracy are the real danger

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The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, addressed a crowded town hall Saturday in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he downplayed the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and suggested mail ballots were a “recipe for fraud.”

In response to a man who asked Musk what his message was to young voters who worry “that voting for a second Trump presidency will lead to democratic backsliding,” Musk replied, “The media tries to characterize Jan. 6 as some sort of violent insurrection, which is simply not the case,” he said, prompting applause from the crowd. More than 100 law enforcement personnel were injured in the attack, some beaten with their own weapons, when a mob of Trump supporters who believed his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of votes.

“It’s not as though the Jan. 6 protests had no merit, they had some merit,” Musk continued. “I disagree with the magnitude of what they did, but it’s not as though there were no issues,” said Musk. 

Musk claimed that people “who say Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy,” a comment that was also received with applause by the crowd of several hundred people packed into the ballroom. Many more watched the event on X, the social media platform Musk purchased two years ago.

Trump, he said, “did actually tell people to not be violent.” While Trump did tell the crowd on Jan. 6 to protest “peacefully and patriotically,” he also encouraged them to “fight like hell” to stop Democrat Joe Biden from becoming the president. 

Musk spent nearly two hours taking questions from town hall participants. The freewheeling session inside a ballroom at a hotel in downtown Lancaster touched on a dizzying range of topics, from space exploration and the Tesla cybertruck to immigration and the efficacy of psychiatric drugs. The town hall was part of Musk’s efforts through his super PAC to help boost Trump in swing states ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election against Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump has said he’d give Musk a role in his administration if he wins the presidency.

Musk was largely praised by the town hall crowd as a visionary and solicited for advice and thoughts about education, arm wrestling, tax loopholes and whether he’d buy the Chicago White Sox. (He said he was a tech guy and had to pick his battles.) Trump won Lancaster County in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and he won Pennsylvania in 2016 against Hillary Clinton but lost it in 2020 to Joe Biden.

Musk said he was in favor of “not heavy handed” regulation of artificial intelligence and railed against “woke religion” as “fundamentally an extinctionist religion.” He said the U.S. birth rate is a significant concern.

He said he believes Jesus was a real person who lived about 2,000 years ago and, when asked for the best advice he’s ever received, replied: “I recommend studying physics.”

Musk, the world’s richest man, has committed more than $70 million to boost Trump in the election and, at events on behalf of his super PAC, has encouraged supporters to embrace voting early. Still, echoing some of Trump’s misgivings about the method, Musk raised his own doubts about the process. He called mail ballots “a strange anomaly that got popularized during COVID,” and he went on to say of mail voting that “really, you have an obvious recipe for fraud and inability to prove fraud.”

Elon Musk Holds Town Hall With Pennsylvania Voters in Lancaster
LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA – OCTOBER 26: SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during an America PAC town hall on October 26, 2024 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

Samuel Corum / Getty Images


There are a number of safeguards to protect mail-in ballots, with various ballot verification protocols, including every state requiring a voter’s signature. 

He also called town hall participant Judey Kamora to the stage to give her a large $1 million check, part of his promotion to give away $1 million a day to a voter in a swing state who has signed his super PAC’s petition backing the U.S. Constitution.

Musk made no mention of the Justice Department’s recent warning that his $1 million sweepstakes could violate federal election law. Nor did he comment on a Wall Street Journal report that the tech billionaire has maintained regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The giveaways are just fine with Josh Fox, 32, a UPS driver from Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

“That’s cool,” Fox said, waiting to get into the rally earlier Saturday. “It would be nice to have it.”

Fox, who plans to vote for Trump, dismissed any suggestion the money may violate federal election rules.

“It’s about driving in support and driving in people who are in support of the Constitution,” Fox said.

contributed to this report.



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Pennsylvania top election official says that 2020 ligation upheld that “elections were accurate”

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Pennsylvania’s top election official said Sunday that the commonwealth’s 2020 elections were “accurate,” while saying Pennsyvlania is “not susceptible to any sort of widespread voter fraud” — and he said officials are preparing with heightened security to combat threats as Election Day draws near.

“Time and time again, in many dozens of cases in 2020, every one of those cases upheld that our elections were accurate and that we’re not susceptible to any sort of widespread voter fraud or anything like that,” Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Al Schmidt said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

The issue of election integrity is top of mind in battleground Pennsylvania, where last week, the Lancaster County district attorney reported incidents of voter registration fraud among a group of around 2,500 ballots. Schmidt said the country reached out to his office “right away” for guidance and is pursuing an investigation “responsibly.” And the top election official said he’s working with counties to provide the resources needed “so that we have a free, fair, safe and secure election in 2024 just as we had in 2020.”

Meanwhile, election officials are combating threats to election workers. Schmidt said in 2020, officials had to “scramble to figure out when threats were incoming,” while outlining the changes put in place since then, including an election threat task force made up of federal, state and local law enforcement partners and election administration. He noted that open lines of communication and clear responsibilities have also made the commonwealth better prepared. 

“So that if any of the ugliness returns that we experienced In 2020, everyone will be ready,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt committed to certifying the election results even if the winner is of the opposite political party, as did Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who also appeared on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. 

Fontes said the state’s safety and security protocols surrounding election results tabulation are a stark departure from recent years. 

“It’s absolutely, completely different from 2020. In fact, I remember in 2018 our greatest security threat was a rattlesnake in the parking lot at the Pinnacle Peak Precinct,” Fontes said. “So this is a radically different set of circumstances that we are dealing with, but we are prepared, and we’re going to have a secure election.”



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Pennsylvania top election official says that 2020 ligation upheld that “elections were accurate”

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Pennsylvania’s top election official said Sunday that the commonwealth’s 2020 elections were “accurate,” while saying Pennsyvlania is “not susceptible to any sort of widespread voter fraud” — and he said officials are preparing with heightened security to combat threats as Election Day draws near.

“Time and time again, in many dozens of cases in 2020, every one of those cases upheld that our elections were accurate and that we’re not susceptible to any sort of widespread voter fraud or anything like that,” Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Al Schmidt said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

The issue of election integrity is top of mind in battleground Pennsylvania, where last week, the Lancaster County district attorney reported incidents of voter registration fraud among a group of around 2,500 ballots. Schmidt said the country reached out to his office “right away” for guidance and is pursuing an investigation “responsibly.” And the top election official said he’s working with counties to provide the resources needed “so that we have a free, fair, safe and secure election in 2024 just as we had in 2020.”

Meanwhile, election officials are combating threats to election workers. Schmidt said in 2020, officials had to “scramble to figure out when threats were incoming,” while outlining the changes put in place since then, including an election threat task force made up of federal, state and local law enforcement partners and election administration. He noted that open lines of communication and clear responsibilities have also made the commonwealth better prepared. 

“So that if any of the ugliness returns that we experienced In 2020, everyone will be ready,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt committed to certifying the election results even if the winner is of the opposite political party, as did Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who also appeared on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. 

Fontes said the state’s safety and security protocols surrounding election results tabulation are a stark departure from recent years. 

“It’s absolutely, completely different from 2020. In fact, I remember in 2018 our greatest security threat was a rattlesnake in the parking lot at the Pinnacle Peak Precinct,” Fontes said. “So this is a radically different set of circumstances that we are dealing with, but we are prepared, and we’re going to have a secure election.”



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Former Rep. Liz Cheney urges women to “vote your conscience,” even if it’s a “secret vote”

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Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday urged women to “vote your conscience” for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election given the strict abortion bans in some states — and even if it is against how the men in their lives think they should vote. 

Referencing the Republicans like herself who have publicly backed Harris, Cheney said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that “there are also many Republicans and independents who are saying ‘look, you know, I don’t want to bring the wrath of … Donald Trump and JD Vance down on me, so I’m going to vote my conscience, I’m not going to talk about it.'”

“We, you know, obviously, encourage that you vote as a secret vote,” Cheney continued. “You should do what you think is right. And I think you’re going to have, frankly, a lot of men and women who will go into the voting booth and will vote their conscience and will vote for Vice President Harris. They may not ever say anything publicly but the results will speak for themselves.”

The comments echo what Michelle Obama said during a Harris rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Saturday night. The former first lady told the crowd that “if you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter. Regardless of the political views of your partner, you get to choose.”

Cheney’s comments come as a CBS News poll released Sunday dug into the gender gap among voters. According to the polls, Harris has a 10-point lead over former President Donald Trump, and four in 10 women think Trump’s campaign is paying too much attention to men.

Cheney, a Harris campaign surrogate, said the campaign has seen an “unprecedented coalition” of women who support abortion rights and those who oppose them coming together to support Harris. 

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Former Rep. Liz Cheney on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Oct. 27, 2024.

CBS News


“That’s because we’ve seen some of the just the draconian laws that have been passed in places like Texas and North Carolina that are preventing women from getting lifesaving health care, preventing women from getting medical care that you know will ensure that, if they have a miscarriage, that they can have babies again, just fundamentally a set of circumstances that can’t be maintained,” Cheney continued. 

Cheney said she didn’t think these groups coming together is about “putting convictions aside” but rather “it’s about looking at the reality on the ground of what’s happened since Roe was overturned.”

“The idea that that, you know, you’ve got those kinds of policies and state laws being put in place is really mobilizing women to say, look, you know, you don’t have to abandon being pro-life, but this kind of circumstance, this kind of really abhorrent situation where women can’t get medical care they need, that just can’t go on,” Cheney said.

In September, Cheney called Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance “misogynistic pigs.” In a separate interview on Sunday, Brennan asked Vance about that comment.

Instead of directly answering, Vance instead called Cheney “the person whose father is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent Arabs and tens of thousands of innocent American troops, and saying, effectively, that if you elect me, I’m going to have the foreign policy of Dick and Liz Cheney.”

In response to those comments, Cheney said that Vance is “doing everything they can to try to distract from the fact that the people who know Donald Trump best, including retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, who is a gold star father, have come out and said very clearly and very directly to the American people that Donald Trump is not fit, that Donald Trump himself, standing near the graves of our fallen service members, says things like they are suckers and losers.”

Cheney added that she is “confident” the American people can “see through” that argument.

Cheney was the third-highest ranking Republican in the House before being ousted over her vote to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Harris will be at a rally on Tuesday at the Ellipse — the same place where Trump told his supporters to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“This is the first presidential election post-January 6, and so you know, you’ve got, in fact, many of the same people who were promising a red wave in 2022 doing the same thing now, we’re not going to see it now,” Cheney said. “We didn’t see it then. And what Vice President Harris has done, I’ve watched her do it. I’ve sat next to her on the stage as she does it. She talks about a whole range of issues. She talks about grocery prices, she talks about women’s health care, she talks about, you know, Donald Trump’s tariff policies, which are massively inflationary, and at the same time, reminds everybody, you have to have a president who obeys the rule of law.”



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