Elon Musk Says People Have Tried to Kill Him, Muses About Building "Flying Metal Suit of Armor" as Defense

"Two people... have already tried to kill me in the past 8 months."

Insecure

Elon Musk says there have been multiple attempts on his life — and he's proposing an unorthodox response.

"Two people (separate occasions) have already tried to kill me in the past 8 months," he tweeted over the weekend. "They were arrested with guns about 20 mins drive from Tesla HQ in Texas."

In response to a tweet advising that he "better beef up [his] security too" in the wake of the attempt on Donald Trump's life during a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, the brash billionaire said that it may be "time to build that flying metal suit of armor."

The quip was, of course, a reference to the Marvel character Iron Man, who was played in a series of Disney movies by Robert Downey Jr, in a performance at least partly inspired by Musk.

Please, Please, Please

For whatever reason, the assassination attempt seems to have unleashed fears among X-formerly-Twitter's right-wing set that the serial entrepreneur they idolize will be next.

In another tweet, for example, far-right pundit Ian Miles Cheong — who was once the subject of memes suggesting he'd been assassinated in Malaysia — begged Musk to "please, please, triple [his] protection."

"If they can come for Trump," Cheong tweeted, "they will also come for you."

It's not the first time Musk has referenced his alleged assassination attempts. Earlier this year, he told conservative Canadian professor Gad Saad during a live audio chat on X Spaces that two "mentally ill" people had tried to do him in.

"I have had two cases in the last six months of two people who are unfortunately very mentally ill," he told Saad. "They have come to Austin to try to kill me... with guns."

One was, per Musk's reckoning, an "extreme schizophrenic" who'd allegedly become convinced that he had "put a chip in his head, like a Neuralink or something," and the other had stopped taking his medication and resultingly suffered a "total detachment from reality."

While we have no reason to disbelieve those claims, we're not sure that an Iron Man suit is the most practical response — especially given Musk's track record with flying things he's invented.

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