Elon Musk has said Donald Trump’s first assassination attempt prompted him to endorse the president sooner than he originally intended to, adding that he was “planning to do it anyway.”

In a joint interview with Trump on Fox News broadcast on Tuesday, Musk said the effort to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July was a “precipitating event.”

“That speeded it up a little bit?” Trump asked about Musk’s endorsement. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” Musk said. “It sped it up, but I was going to do it anyway.”

Trump was wounded in the ear after a gunman fired into the crowd attending his campaign rally in the key battleground state on July 13. The shooting killed one attendee.

Musk endorsed the video in a post on his platform, X, formerly Twitter, and attached a clip of the attack.

“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote at the time.

Trump was unharmed during a second assassination attempt about two months later at his golf club in Florida.

Over the course of the campaign, Musk became one of the Trump team’s top donors and surrogates on the trail.

In the interview, Musk pushed back against the criticism the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has garnered for wreaking havoc across the federal government with its said effort to identify and cut waste and abuse.

Musk said that DOGE is working to ensure that Trump’s executive orders are being followed in its effort to “restore the will of the people,” as many of DOGE’s actions are being challenged in the courts.

“If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

Both Trump and Musk appeared to dismiss Musk’s potential conflicts of interest as the owner of several companies with federal government contracts.

“I haven’t asked the president for anything ever,” Musk said.

He also pledged to recuse himself if a potential conflict were to arise. Still, the billionaire has not made his ethics agreement available to the public.

The White House has said Musk serves as a Special Government Employee and is also a senior adviser to the president.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was forced to clarify on Tuesday that the billionaire “has been tasked with overseeing DOGE on behalf of the president” after an earlier administration court filing said Musk isn’t an employee of the operation.

In the interview, Musk said he was essentially offering the president “tech support” as the two men exchanged words of praise.

“He gets it done,” Trump said of Musk. “He’s a leader.”