Alessia Pierdomenico, Shutterstock.com
CV NEWS FEED // Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump sat down for a live conversation with X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, hours after returning to the platform for only the second time in three-and-a-half years.
The discussion began on X Spaces 42 minutes after its scheduled start time at 8:00 p.m. ET. Musk attributed the delay to a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on X’s servers which “saturated hundreds of gigabits of data.”
After the initial technical difficulties were finally resolved, the in-platform “Space” where the interview was held became by far the largest in the history of the website and the first to surpass a million live listeners.
Musk emphasized that his virtual sit-down with Trump was a conversation as opposed to an “adversarial interview.”
The billionaire businessman – who also heads Tesla and SpaceX – said that the conversation with the former president was “aimed at open-minded independent voters” who were “just trying to make up their minds.”
Widely considered to be part of the political center, Musk announced he was endorsing Trump in November’s election about a half-hour after the former president was injured in a failed assassination attempt on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Your actions after that assassination attempt were inspiring,” Musk told Trump at the beginning of their conversation. “The President of the United States represents America, and that is America. That is strength under fire. That is part of the reason why I was excited to endorse you.”
“You can’t fake bravery,” Musk later said.
Trump told the X owner that he “knew immediately” the object that hit him was a bullet, and it was a “miracle” that he turned his head away from the trajectory of the fire just at the moment when the shot rang out.
“For those people that don’t believe in God, I think we got to all to start thinking about that,” the 45th president said. “I’m a believer, now I’m more of a believer.”
Trump indicated that he will, as previously reported, return to Butler for a rally in October.
“We’re going back to Butler,” he told Musk. “I think I’ll probably start by saying, ‘As I was saying prior to being so horribly interrupted…’”
Later in the interview, Trump confronted the campaign of his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris for copying his proposed policy of “no tax on tips.”
“And by the way they had just the opposite,” Trump noted. “They had not only tax on tips, but they hired 88,000 IRS agents and many of them were assigned go get waitresses and caddies … on tips.”
“They had a policy – they were really going to go after you and were really harassing people horribly,” Trump said. “And then all of a sudden, for politics, [Harris] comes out with what I said.”
“These people are fake,” Trump emphasized.
On the topic of the ongoing border crisis, he said there “has never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this.”
“We have a defective government,” Trump said. “These are defective people. And they’re not people that should be running it. But where you see it the best is the border.”
“Then [Harris] gets up and she tries to pretend like she’s going to do something,” he continued. “She had three-and-a-half years. And by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything.”
“It’s all talk,” Trump added. “[Harris is] incompetent and [President Joe Biden is] incompetent. And frankly, I think she’s more incompetent than he is. And that’s saying something.”
When the conversation turned to foreign policy, Musk said that there is a question of “immense importance” as to “whether the United States president is intimidating or not intimidating.” Musk stressed “how much that matters to global security.”
“There’s some real tough characters out there and if they don’t think the American president is tough they will do what they want to do,” the X owner pointed out, referring to hostile foreign leaders. “That puts the whole world in danger.”
Trump responded that authoritarian dictators such as China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “are tough people at the top of their game, and when they see a Kamala, or … Biden – Sleepy Joe – they can’t even believe it.”
Musk replied: “People like Kim Jong Un, they respond to strength, not weakness.”
Trump went on to call Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea a “modern-day axis of evil.”
“These are powerful countries, very heavy nuclear power, which is the biggest threat,” he said. “The biggest threat is not global warming … The biggest threat is nuclear warming.”
Trump then said that out of all the issues, the thing that is really making voters angry is “what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy.”
“It’s a disaster with inflation,” he went on. “It doesn’t matter what you make. The inflation is eating you alive.”
Musk explained that “inflation is effectively a tax on people who save money and people who are working day-to-day.”
Toward the end of the conversation, Musk said: “What’s happening overnight is they’re rewriting history and making Kamala sound like a moderate, when in fact she is far-left. Like far- far-left.”
Trump interjected: “Worse than Bernie Sanders.”
A 2019 report by GovTrack listed Harris as “ranked most liberal” of all of the sitting U.S. senators from that year, a group that contained the self-professed socialist Sanders. The moniker of “most liberal” was later scrubbed from the website’s profile of Harris.
“She’s a radical-left lunatic,” Trump added. “If she’s gonna be our president, very quickly you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Musk seemed to at least partly agree, telling Trump: “I think it’s essential that you win for the good of the country.”
“I just want to say, here’s to an exciting, inspiring future that people can look forward to, one they can be optimistic and excited about,” Musk continued. “That’s the future I believe you’ll bring as president, and that’s why I endorse you.”
“America is at a fork in the road,” Musk told Trump, “and you are the path to prosperity. Kamala is the opposite.”
Before and during his term in the White House, Trump was known as a heavy X (then known as Twitter) user. Some observers even asserted that his proficiency on the platform was a contributing factor to his upset 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.
In January 2021, the social media network indefinitely suspended the then-sitting president’s account. Critics widely denounced the move as unprecedented politically-motivated censorship.
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However, Musk reinstated Trump’s account in November 2022, less than a month after he took control of the platform.
Despite this, Trump did not initially return to posting on the platform and continued to use TRUTH Social as his primary preferred method of mass communication.
Trump’s first – and before Monday his only – X post following his reinstatement consisted of a now-iconic picture of his mugshot which he posted in August 2023.
Then on Monday, he began a series of posts in anticipation of that day’s conversation with Musk.
“Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Trump asked.
“Our economy is shattered,” he wrote. “Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!”
Trump’s post received a half million “likes” in just ten hours.
