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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held a friendly two-hour interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Musk’s social media platform X on Monday (August 12) after the start of the event was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical issues.
Musk, a Trump supporter, blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, which floods a server or network with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, but his claims could not be verified.
Trump tried to spin the issue into a positive, congratulating Musk for drawing such a large audience. At times during the lengthy conversation, as many as 1.3 million people were listening, according to a counter on the X.
The technical issues were reminiscent of a similar incident on X in May 2023, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was marred by chaos due to a platform glitch.
At the time, Trump mocked DeSantis on his social media platform Truth Social. “My red button is bigger, better, stronger, and works (Truth!)” Trump posted, “Your red button does not work.”
Ahead of Monday’s event, Musk had written: “I will be doing some system scaling testing tonight and tomorrow to get ready for this talk.” X did not respond to requests for details or evidence about the alleged cyberattack.
The two have repeatedly praised each other, with the Tesla CEO praising Trump’s bravery in the face of an assassination attempt last month, while Trump congratulated Musk on his willingness to fire workers who demanded better working conditions.
“You’re the greatest tailor,” Trump said. “I mean, I look at what you did. You walked in and you said, ‘Do you want to quit?’ They were on strike — I won’t mention the company by name — but they were on strike. And you said, ‘That’s fine, y’all are leaving.’ ”
Musk, the world’s richest man, announced his support for Trump shortly after his assassination, despite Republican opposition to government support for electric car makers such as Tesla. Musk supported Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has since moved to the right.
“I think we’re at a crossroads in our destiny and our civilization, and I think we need to be on the right path, and I think you are the right path,” he told Trump at the end of the interview.
The chats with Musk provided Trump with an opportunity to speak freely about his dissatisfaction, personal attacks and exaggerated or false statements.
Musk let Trump lead the conversation and did not challenge Trump’s false claims, such as that other countries were sending criminals from their prisons to the southern border of the United States or that the price of bacon had increased four or five times.
Studies show that immigrants, including those living in the United States illegally, do not commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.
The speech was Trump’s latest effort to steal the spotlight from his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose last-minute entry into the race has galvanized the party and boosted fundraising.
Harris has dominated headlines with a string of spirited rallies since unseating Biden as the Democratic nominee three weeks ago, and next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago could boost her momentum again.
After the interview, Joseph Costello, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement: “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and his ilk — a bunch of self-obsessed wealthy people who will sell out the middle class and won’t be able to live stream in 2024.”
The former president sounded as if he had a lisp on multiple occasions, something many listeners noticed on X. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s speech.
Harris Momentum
Trump has repeatedly insulted Harris, calling her “third rate,” “incompetent” and a “radical left-wing lunatic.”
But then he complimented her on her looks.
“She looks like the most beautiful actress that ever lived,” Trump said of Harris’ photo on the cover of Time magazine. “It’s a painting, actually, and she looks very much like the great first lady, Melania,” he added, referring to his wife, Melania Trump.
He also expressed anger at Harris replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket.
Trump said: “She hasn’t given an interview since this whole hoax began” and falsely claimed Biden’s abandonment of the race was a “coup.”
Trump has been ahead of Biden in polls in many battleground states that could be crucial to the outcome of the Nov. 5 election, but is now trailing Harris in some of the same states.
Trump has long been critical of electric vehicles, but his tone has shifted since Musk came out in support of them. On Monday, he called the electric cars produced by Tesla “incredible.”
He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – three authoritarian strongmen – as being “at the top of their game”.
Trump returns to Twitter
Trump returned to Twitter, which Musk named X, with a series of posts on Monday, his first in a year, restarting the main method of communication during the previous campaign and his four years in the White House, including the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his fans on January 6, 2021.
A month after Musk took over Google X, Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump was suspended by the platform’s former owner over concerns that he would incite violence.
Trump frequently posts on the “Truth Social” platform he launched in February 2022, but his posts on the platform reach a much smaller audience than on X.
Musk, who has echoed Trump’s false allegations about voter fraud and Biden’s immigration policies, formed an outside super PAC to support Trump’s campaign. The PAC is currently under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of the state’s law on collecting voter information.
(Editing by Georgi Gotev)
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