Elon Musk says risk of his assassination is ‘quite significant’

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has spoken about the risk of “something bad happening” to him during a wide-ranging interview.

Elon Musk’s goal to transform Twitter into a haven of free speech might cause him harm.

The world’s richest man has claimed the risk of his assassination is “quite significant” for him now.

In a wide-ranging, two-hour Question and Answer audio chat on Twitter Spaces, the social media platform’s CEO told listeners he “definitely” would not “be doing any open-air car parades, let me put it that way”.

“Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant,” he said.

“It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t, and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen … There’s definitely some risk there.”

Elon Musk revealed he believes there could be an assassination attempt on him. Picture: AFP

The Tesla CEO and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” said that his logic for the changes at Twitter had one objective: “At the end of the day, we just want to have a future where we’re not oppressed”.

“[Where] our speech is not suppressed, and we can say what we want to say without fear of reprisals,” he said.

“As long as you’re not really causing harm to somebody else, then you should be allowed to say what you want.”

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter last month he has reinstated previously suspended accounts including former US president Donald Trump, and announced he would grant a “general amnesty” to everyone who had been booted off that had not broken the law or engaged in identity fraud or spam.

Much of Musk’s conversation on Twitter Spaces, which took place on Saturday night local time, was devoted to the so-called ‘Twitter Files’, a selection of internal documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday.

Taibbi’s thread included files that showed Joe Biden’s team instructing Twitter employees to remove specific political content in October 2020, just weeks before he was elected US president.

Hunter Biden’s laptop files include potentially incriminating information about Joe Biden. Picture: Supplied

One day after Musk and Taibbi released the bombshell report on political censorship at Twitter, Musk said that there are “more smoking guns” he plans to reveal in the future.

He said he hopes that by showing how Twitter worked to suppress information, it will force mainstream media to be more committed to the truth.

“We’re just gonna put all the information out there try to get a clean slate we will be iteratively better and it will force other media companies to also be more truthful or else they’ll lose their readership,” Musk said in the live Twitter Space Q & A session, which tens of thousands of users tuned into.

It’s not clear when the new information will be released.

Originally published as Elon Musk says risk of his assassination is ‘quite significant’