Summary
The richest man in the world and the man who was and might be the most powerful man in the world agreed on almost everything.
On Monday night, tech giant Elon Musk opened up his X platform to the public. This gave Donald Trump a way to spread his lies, conspiracy theories, and extremism without having to worry about fact checks. Trump is using this to try to stop Kamala Harris from becoming the Democratic choice.
The chat was yet another strange event in a presidential campaign that has been full of unexpected turns in recent weeks, such as an attempt on Trump’s life and President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his reelection run.
The former president has been having a hard time keeping up with the new Democratic nominee’s fast start. During their long conversation, Musk seemed to use his fame and platform to help Trump figure out how to make a stronger case against Harris.
At one point, Trump said of a Democratic opponent who has taken away his polls lead in just three weeks as a candidate, “She believes in being radical left.” And the former president, who tried to overturn an election he lost, said that Biden had been illegally removed from office so that Harris could take his place. “Say what you want, this was a coup, but she hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam began.” “This was a coup against the president of the United States,” Trump raged.
Musk agreed with Trump that Harris was a radical lefty. Musk also made his friend feel good by giving the impression that he was strong and his Democratic opponents were weak. What did he say about America’s enemies? “Do they fear the American president, or is it someone they don’t respect and don’t fear?” The video of the murder should be looked at. “Well, you know, President Trump is like, “Don’t mess with me.””
As of Monday night, Musk made it clear that he wants Trump to win a second term. He has already backed Trump. “You are the way to wealth.” “I don’t think Kamala is like that at all,” he told Trump.
At the worst time of Trump’s campaign so far, at least 1.3 million people were listening at the same time. This is because Musk has a lot at stake in getting the next government to treat him well. He thought that at least 100 million people would watch the videos in the next few days.
Trump and Musk both stood to win a lot
At times during the event, Trump — who spent months hammering Biden over his age, stutter and struggles to sometimes complete sentences — appeared to be lisping or slurring his words. It was not clear whether an audio issue was to blame. Asked for an explanation, the ex-president’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Must be your hearing.”
The chummy conversation between the tycoon and the former president also showed what each man had to gain.
Musk was able to impress upon a possible future president, who is known for transactional leadership, his own views on immigration, the economy, curtailing government regulation and tax cuts. Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, a key player in the US space program, and Tesla, which makes electric vehicles, can be impacted by changes in government policy. The entire conversation was rife with potential conflicts of interest. No ordinary American would ever have a similar opportunity to have the ear of a possible future president.
At one point, Musk even offered to take a position in the US government — perhaps as part of an efficiency commission to slash the administrative state. Trump said he’d “love it” if Musk got involved, noting the multi-billionaire is a great “cutter.”
Trump gained plenty from his investment of more than two hours of his time. Musk didn’t challenge him on any of his lies and misrepresentations – for instance, his prediction that 60 million undocumented migrants would invade the United States if he lost in November.
During the talk, Musk downplayed the threat from global warming while defending his pioneering electric vehicle empire. Trump, meanwhile, warned about the threat from “nuclear warming,” which he said posed a greater danger than “global warming.” It was not clear if he was trying to refer to nuclear power – which Musk argued was “not as scary as people think.”
The encounter was a powerful example of the way that presidential politics has been transformed by social media and the splintering of traditional journalism. Trump may not have been president without Twitter, as his emergence as a political force in 2016 coincided with the site’s heyday. His skills at exploiting the new medium like no other politician made that year’s presidential election a unique combination of a man and his moment.
Eight years on, under the leadership of Musk, who preaches unfettered free speech, X has dismantled many of the safeguards against the propagation of falsehoods and conspiracy theories on the site. It is, therefore, a perfect venue for the ex-president to escape the constraints of traditional media and to spin his web of alternative reality — which is hugely popular among his millions of supporters.
Republicans are complaining about what they say is flattering media coverage of the nascent Harris run. But few candidates have had an easier ride than the Republican nominee got on X on Monday night.
In a sign of the international political questions raised by the evolution of X, a European commissioner, Thierry Breton, wrote to Musk to warn him that he must prevent the “amplification of harmful content,” which could be accessed by consumers inside the bloc.
Cheung warned on X that the EU should “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the US Presidential election,” in an exchange that appeared to auger poorly for already testy relations between the Trump team and Musk and Europe.
After staying away from Twitter and X for years, Trump was full of praise for Musk
Trump told a lot of lies and exaggerations on Monday night, including about the number of people who crossed the border, the size of the inflation crisis (which has since subsided), his legal problems, the energy policy of the current administration, and his usual claim that other countries were dumping their prisoners across the southern US border.
Many of Trump’s supporters will likely agree with a lot of what the former president said when they listen to or hear clips of the talk in the coming days. This shows that he can still be elected even after Harris changed the race.
At times, Trump did make a more logical and focused case for a second term than he has in recent days, when he seems confused by the change in a race he thought he was going to win against Biden. He and Musk said that the president and vice president were responsible for the high prices that millions of Americans have had to pay because of inflation.
But Trump’s constant rambling and support of conspiracy theories showed why many voters don’t like him and why his appeal to suburban women and women voters in key states is called into question.
At first, the session’s delays made it look like it would become a new symbol for Trump’s mistakes. Musk said that a distributed denial-of-service attack was to blame, but it wasn’t possible to prove right away that bad people were behind it. Musk said, “A lot of people don’t want to just listen to what President Trump has to say.”
As soon as the Harris campaign heard about it, they shared an old Trump Truth Social post that criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for having a rough start to his primary campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk that had technical problems.
The event was Trump’s return to X, which used to be Twitter. He had been banned from the site by its previous owners after his mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Musk made his account work again.
If you listened to the whole two-hour talk, you would have learned more about how Musk’s political views are changing and how he is becoming more willing to use his power and money to voice them than about Trump. But the former president was overjoyed to have a new friend when he needed one for political reasons.
“What a great guy you are! You did a great job.” Trump told her goodbye, “You are a great inspiration to people.”