The tech billionaire deleted the post on his X platform and passed it off as a “joke.” However, the White House did not find it funny and instead called it “irresponsible.”
“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the White House said in a statement. Now the Secret Service is involved.
No doubt various TLAs have compiled dossiers on various very important people. It would be irresponsible of them not to. People who have so much power and access are intrinsic security threats, and that's no secret to the spy agencies.
Of course they might frame it differently. They might say that they compile information so that they can make sure that the powerful person doesn't get blackmailed, for example. It's easy to try to phrase things in a way that suggests you're protecting them, when the actual theoretical goal is protecting us from what they could do if things went sideways.