The biggest moments from Elon Musk’s interview with Trump

Last night, former President Donald Trump made his return to the social media site X, once known as Twitter, in the most exaggerated form possible: a livestream with the site’s current owner, Elon Musk. The interview, conducted on Spaces, X’s platform for live audio conversations, covered everything from illegal immigration to union busting. At one point, Trump and Musk stressed that the United States needs a leader who can inspire fear in other countries. Over the course of two hours, the world’s richest man and the former president of the United States reminded us that they share some striking similarities — a huge ego, a love of attention and social media, but also a sense of victimhood. (Vice President Kamala Harris may love Venn diagrams, but she must hate this intersection.)

Although Trump was banned after the January 6 incident and restored his freedom of speech after Musk took over, he only returned to the Twitter platform in text form in yesterday’s conversation. Musk and Trump Promotion Interview as Shop sign entertainment eventMusk promised that the interview would be “unscripted, open-ended, so it should be a lot of fun!” Instead, the two talked about mostly predictable topics: the U.S. border, crime, and then the border. The interview was another opportunity for Trump to spew insults and false claims without the interviewer pushing back — not even when Trump told the electric car company CEO Musk that he planned to “drill, baby, drill” in his second term.

Due to technical problems, the live broadcast started nearly an hour late. Nearly 20 minutes after the live broadcast began, Musk wrote There appeared to be a “massive DDOS attack on X.” (A DDoS attack intentionally disrupts a website by flooding it with traffic; if lots of people are naturally trying to tune in, calling it a DDoS attack isn’t accurate.) Previous Spaces events at X have also been fraught with glitches—last May, Musk had a live conversation with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in which DeSantis announced his presidential run, Crash More than 500,000 people tried to tune in. Before the Trump interview, Musk said X would run stress tests to make sure the livestream could handle the traffic. Popular livestreams on YouTube and Twitch have already handled Millions of concurrent viewers Previously, the most popular anchors on these platforms often enjoyed Hundreds of thousands audience.

Today, Trump returned to Truth Social, the social media site in which he owns a majority stake, to praise Musk and Criticizing the media There have been reports of technical issues causing delays in the live stream.

“I absolutely hate the Fake News Media,” he wrote. “It’s so bad for our Country!”

Trump and Musk have not always had a good relationship. In an interview on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Musk said CNBC interview Musk said that Trump was “not the right person” and that he “does not have the kind of personality that would represent America well.” Despite this, Musk initially developed a friendly relationship with the president after Trump took office, even agreeing to join the Two White House advisory boardsHe is very fast Step down Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, which aimed to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

Then, at a 2022 rally, Trump claimed Musk had told him he voted for him in 2016, calling the billionaire a “Nonsense TalkerMusk fight back Trump should “set sail,” Trump responded on Truth Social, saying Musk came to the Oval Office to ask for help “solving all his subsidy programs,” and he could have told Musk Kneel down and beg.

Now it seems that all this is a thing of the past. Musk officially Agree Trump was arrested on the day of the assassination in July and supported Super PAC Aims to get 800,000 Americans in swing states to vote for Trump. Wall Street Journal It was recently reported that the two now speak on the phone several times a month, discussing topics such as “immigration, technology and science.”

At the end of the conversation, Trump congratulated Musk on reaching “60 to 70 million” listeners, seemingly confusing the number of passive views of the event on X with the number of viewers (a little over 1 million). Musk mused that the total number of views for the interview would eventually be in the hundreds of millions.

At that moment, the commonality between the two people became apparent – self-aggrandizement and Exaggerate their achievementsThey all have Habit explain Seditious Whether in front of the camera or online, they have used social media to cultivate a rabid fan base.

Trump has also largely stopped posting on X after returning to office in November 2022, posting primarily on Truth Social. He is bound by an exclusivity clause that restricts him from posting non-political posts outside of Truth Social — but this interview appears to fall within that exemption because it Politically relatedYesterday, before the interview, Trump posted several times on X to promote his presidential campaign and pinned campaign ads.

Before August 12, Trump had not posted anything on X in nearly a year.

Now, though, Musk and Trump are also united by personal grievances and persecution. Trump complained that Democrats are using the justice system against him, referring to the multiple criminal investigations he is under. “The Biden administration has done something that has never been done in this country, using this kind of nonsense to attack their political opponent – me,” Trump said. Musk said a few days ago. Posted a picture (Source unknown) X portrays himself and his political views as a resistance to oppression—like Luke Skywalker in Star WarsKatniss Everdeen The Hunger Gamesor Neo The MatrixThe image reads: “When it’s fiction, you understand it. When it’s the reality of your life, you refuse to see it.”

Musk complained that people portrayed him as “far-right, which is ridiculous because I’m building electric cars,” he said. “When Obama was president, I stood in line for six hours to shake his hand.” Although Musk said he previously voted Democratic, he is in the process of voting in 2022. Announce He will start voting Republican because the Democratic Party has become the party of “division and hatred.” Over the past year, he has repeatedly made comments similar to those made by white supremacists. The Great Replacement Theoryaccusing someone of a conspiracy to replace white people with Undocumented immigrants He has also been dismissive of LGBTQ+ equality, showing Special Contempt Transgender Musk’s daughter, who is transgender, has criticized his Her gender identity treatment On the subject of Instagram.

In their conversation at X, the two touched on a number of odd topics that highlighted their shared confusion—like when Musk mentioned Building a tunnel “Solve the traffic problem.” Trump praised China’s high-speed rail system, but Musk was referring to tunnels for Tesla cars, such as Las Vegas LoopBoth men considered Harris a “far left” politician, with Trump repeating His accusation Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race is a “coup” for the Democratic Party. On the issue of government overspending, Trump declared that he would close the Department of Education and “move education back to the states” in his second term. The former president also appeared to praise Musk’s Mass layoffs of disgruntled Twitter employees in late 2022. “I won’t mention the company’s name,” he said, “but they went on strike, and you said, ‘It’s OK, y’all go.’ ” After the X interview, the United Auto Workers sued Federal labor fees It cooperated with the National Labor Relations Board, which accused Trump and Musk of “unlawfully attempting to threaten and intimidate workers.”

At the beginning of the interview, Musk said he wanted to show what Trump was like outside of the confrontational interview, although the former president is known for insisting Countless gatherings He spoke without restraint at the event. “It’s hard to understand a person if you can’t hear them speak normally,” Musk claimed, adding that the event was aimed at “open-minded independent voters.” It is unclear how many voters were impressed by Trump and Musk’s remarks.