Trump Returns to X With Two-Hour Chat With Elon Musk Hit by Glitch, Gets Musk’s Approval

 

Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump has returned to the social media platform X in an attempt to recover from a rocky couple of weeks on the campaign trail.

On Monday, he celebrated the event by chatting on Spaces with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, who has publicly supported Trump’s re-election campaign.

The discussion began about 40 minutes late, after what Musk called a “massive” cyberattack on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.

He said the audience will be limited and that a recording will be shared later.

In a rambling chat that lasted nearly two hours, the two men discussed Trump’s Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, the European Union, China, climate change, censorship and immigration.

The Republican took the opportunity to talk at length about some of his favorite topics and reiterate that he was the victim of political vengeance, while Musk repeatedly reiterated his support for Trump.

After Trump claimed that Harris was a “radical leftist nutcase” and “worse than Bernie Sanders,” Musk responded: “It’s essential that you win this election for the good of the country.”

About 1.2 million people were listening.

In the hours before Monday’s speech, Trump’s campaign called it “the interview of the century.”

He also posted a series of campaign videos, attacking Harris and warning his followers about perceived threats from the political left.

Trump’s campaign has taken a hit since Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of Harris, leaving 78-year-old Trump as the oldest candidate in the presidential race.

The vice president and her running mate Tim Walz have revitalized the Democratic campaign, appearing at a series of rallies in recent days. Recent polls have given her a lead over Trump in key Midwestern states.

Harris’s campaign dismissed the discussion.

“Trump’s entire campaign serves people like Elon Musk and himself: selfish rich people who will betray the middle class and who won’t be able to live stream in 2024,” read a statement posted to X after Trump and Musk finished speaking.

A long absence

Trump’s social media attack on X comes after a long absence from the platform, which was once his favorite online pulpit.

But in 2021, in the final days of his presidency, Trump was suspended from posting on the site.

Twitter executives had cited “the risk of further incitement to violence” as the rationale for their decision: just two days earlier, on January 6, 2021, Trump supporters had attacked the U.S. Capitol after the Republican falsely claimed that his defeat in the 2020 election was the result of voter fraud.

But in October 2022, Musk took control of the social media platform in a $44 billion deal. Soon after, he followed through on his promise to bring Trump back to the platform, reinstating his Twitter account that November.

Twitter was the first major platform to lift the ban imposed on the former president after the events of January 6.

However, Trump has refused to use Twitter even after his reinstatement. Before Monday, he had published only one post since 2021, to mark the day he turned himself in to the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, on August 24, 2023.

The post featured his mug shot and the all-caps message, “Election interference. Never give up!” He has been charged with conspiracy in the state for his alleged attempts to subvert the 2020 election, one of four criminal charges he faces.

Trump currently has more than 88.2 million followers on X, which was renamed in 2023.

A rocky area

After leaving X, Trump communicated with his followers primarily through Truth Social, a platform owned by his eponymous Trump Media & Technology Group.

But there his account is followed by only 7.53 million users, compared to X’s 88.9 million.

Trump’s return to the platform comes at a time when he is struggling to adjust to Harris’ role as Democratic nominee.

Musk revealed the timing of the interview on Sunday, exactly three weeks after Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race.

Biden has thrown his support behind Harris, who was officially confirmed as the Democratic nominee last week after the party held an online vote among its delegates.

Since Harris took office as a Democrat, Trump has seen his numbers slip in some national polls.

While Trump had previously outpaced the 81-year-old Biden in key states, a New York Times and Siena College poll released Aug. 10 found the Republican nominee slipping behind Harris in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump trailed Harris, 59, by four percentage points in each of those states, with 46 percent support to his 50 percent. In a national matchup, Harris led with 48 percent support to Trump’s 47, the poll found.

The Republican candidate has also had difficulty in recent media appearances, most notably at the July 31 conference for the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).

During his appearance at the conference, Trump sparked controversy by questioning Harris’s identity as a Black and South Asian woman. He also attacked the moderator who asked the first question.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible way,” he told moderator Rachel Scott of ABC News, prompting shock from the audience.

Later, when Scott asked about Harris’s position on the Democratic ticket, Trump falsely insinuated that the vice president had hidden her black identity.

“She’s always been of Indian descent. She was just promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until several years ago when she became black, and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said, in remarks that were widely criticized as racist.

NPR news later compared the appearance to “a slow-motion car crash.”

Trump’s campaign has been in damage control ever since, promoting the hashtag #TrumpOnX ahead of Monday’s interview with Musk in an effort to drum up viewership.

A spotlight for Musk

Monday’s interview was also another opportunity for Musk, who has 194 million followers on X, to exert his influence on U.S. politics.

While speaking with Trump, he often referred to “my views” on issues such as climate change and fossil fuels, and extolled the “sexy” nature of his Tesla electric cars. He also spoke of the need for governments to reduce regulation, a theme Trump enthusiastically embraced.

With a net worth of over $200 billion, Musk is considered the richest man in the world and controls companies such as Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.

Musk, who previously supported Democrats like former President Barack Obama, has veered to the right in recent years.

Following an assassination attempt against Trump on July 13, the entrepreneur publicly offered his support for the Republican candidate, posting on X: “I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery.”

Critics have accused Musk of using X as a launching pad for the far right and of loosening safeguards meant to contain the spread of misinformation on the platform. Musk, however, has portrayed himself as a champion of free speech.

Monday’s interview isn’t the first time Musk has used his platform to interview a right-wing political candidate for the November election.

In May 2023, Musk hosted Ron DeSantis for a conversation about X, as the Florida governor launched his Republican presidential campaign on the platform. But the broadcast was marred by false starts and glitches, which Musk attributed to the servers’ “efforts.”

Musk seemed to be aware that he wanted to avoid a repeat of Monday’s flawed performance. The day before, he wrote that he would “run some system scaling tests tonight and tomorrow in preparation for the conversation.”

He also invited X-ers to submit their questions. “This is not scripted and there are no topic limits, so it should be a lot of fun!”

[Source: Al Jazeera]

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