Elon Musk in Lancaster, Pennsylvania last Saturday.
Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Last weekend, some 1,500 people gathered at a Marriott ballroom in downtown Lancaster, Pa., to seek advice. Many of them wore red MAGA hats, but this wasn’t just a campaign event. Even if the richest man in the world had come to replace Donald Trump, Elon Musk was received as a mix of Tony Stark and Tony Robbins.

After an hour of watching the Penn State football game – the crowd cheered Trump’s ads and jeered Kamala Harris’s – Musk headed to a stadium. Jock Jams– a stylish soundtrack and enthusiastic cheers. He then delivered a brief, rambling monologue in which he expressed his fear of being targeted by assassins, declared that “journalism is dead,” mused about the terraforming of Mars, where “we would be illegal aliens,” and stated at one point: “You really have to hand it to the ancient Sumerians” in reference to their invention of writing. At another point, he punctuated his remarks with the apt statement: “Crazy times, man, crazy times. » There wasn’t much of an argument to support Trump, even though he encouraged people to vote early in person and turn in their outstanding mail-in ballots.

His speech was just the prelude to a two-hour question and answer segment. The crowd was amazed that someone worth it quarter of a trillion dollars would come to Lancaster, of all places. People like Grant Nagle from Reading lined up for hours to meet him, asking him how to inspire their children’s curiosity and pitching technological innovations. “Just trying to go to Mars is really cool. I think having a goal like that is really inspiring for people,” Nagle told me, wearing a SpaceX shirt. When the opportunity presented itself, he asked Musk, “What is the most useful and powerful advice you have ever received?”

At first, Musk stood for ten seconds thinking in silence. He then exclaimed: “Huh! Yes, indeed, vote Republican,” for his own amusement before attempting to actually answer the question. He thought about the answer slowly and out loud, talking about the importance of studying physics, then finally responded: “Aspire to be less wrong.” »

Mary Ressler, a teacher from Hempfield, approached Musk with hope. She said her daughter suffered from mental health issues and had lost two brothers to suicide. With his track record of innovation, she thought Musk could make a difference: “He has the connections and even he doesn’t have the answers. He could create a think tank on mental health. Soon the mic was passed to her and she asked, “What can you do to fix our broken mental health system in the United States?”

He immediately asked her for suggestions, but seemed to focus primarily on pharmaceuticals. He lamented that “things are approved and (doctors) go wild” prescribing them. After Ressler added her concerns about prisons serving as de facto mental health facilities, Musk incongruously asked her if there were any pharmaceuticals she thought should be approved, then said, “I think some of the medications prescribed are pretty basic. » He further observed that “nature abhors a vacuum.” People need to believe in something, and the decline of religion has led people to seek new religions, secular religions. He added, “Woke is essentially a secular religion, but it is believed very fervently,” and he sighed deeply.

The daily distribution of a million-dollar check to a voter in a swing state who signed his petition to protect the Constitution gave the event an almost medieval atmosphere, like when the king’s supplicants stood in line to ask for a favor. As he read the name of Saturday night’s winner, a loud cry of “WHAAAAAT!” » came from one side of the room as a woman suddenly learned of her new boon.

The gift has attracted attention of the Justice Department, the Philadelphia district attorney and election law experts, who suggested that it was an illegal bribe. Standing on stage with the winner and an aide holding an oversized check, Musk said it was just a troll. “People wonder what’s going on with the million-dollar prizes. Well, we have to get the mainstream media to talk about it, and I knew they would complain like hell about it…go to all the newspapers and TV stations complaining like crazy. Speaking to himself, he said, “Great, that’ll get the message across.” »

Amid the requests for advice were some traditional questions for a political gathering, like the one on tariffs. Two far-right provocateurs tried to get Musk, who has long been ambiguous about the nature of his faith, to say whether he accepted the divinity of Jesus Christ. Musk dismissed them, saying, “I believe in the teachings of Christ. I believe in Christian principles.

The most pointed question concerned January 6. Reading patiently and precisely on his phone, a young man asked Musk about Trump’s failure to accept the results of the 2020 election and the “violent disruption of the vote count” as the room filled with jeers . . As they grew louder, he asked, “What would you say to ease the concerns of young voters like me who fear that voting for the second term of the Trump presidency could lead to a democratic retreat?»

Musk interrupted the boos by saying, “I think that’s a good question,” before immediately launching into a thorough defense of Trump and his debunked claims of voter fraud in the last presidential election. “The media is trying to portray January 6 as some kind of violent insurrection, which is simply not the case. This is false…January 6 was in no way a violent insurrection,” Musk said. He then went further, saying the protests in Washington that culminated in the attack on the Capitol “had some merit.” He concluded by saying that “those who say Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves a threat to democracy.”

The final question of the evening came as the clock approached 11 p.m., by which time the crowd had thinned. “What are your methods for identifying objective truth and what is your preferred epistemological framework?

“I would really recommend you study physics,” he replied.