Trump to be interviewed by supporter Elon Musk at X

Donald Trump will be interviewed live on X on Monday by his billionaire boss and influential backer Elon Musk, as the former Republican president seeks to reignite online enthusiasm for his flagging White House campaign.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has become a prominent voice in U.S. politics, but he has been accused of turning the platform formerly known as Twitter into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories.

“This interview is unscripted and there are no restrictions on topics, so it should be very interesting!” Musk, 53, who has an estimated net worth of $235 billion, wrote in a preview of Sunday’s interview.

Ever since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee to succeed President Joe Biden, rising enthusiasm for her and strong polling have made it difficult for Trump to shift his stance.

Musk, one of the Democrats’ fiercest critics, has used his 194 million followers on X to attack liberal efforts to promote diversity and inclusion — which he calls the “woke virus” — and the White House’s handling of the southern border.

He frequently spreads far-right misinformation about undocumented immigrants and voter fraud.

The conversation is expected to be cordial as previously tense relations between the tech mogul and the Republican candidate have turned around, with Musk becoming something of a hero among young people who share Trump’s views.

It is these viewers who don’t watch rallies or conservative cable news that Trump hopes to attract.

Trump, 78, began posting to X on Monday for the first time in more than a year, and last week he participated in an interview with internet celebrity Adin Ross, who has been banned multiple times by streaming site Twitch for policy violations.

‘Greater responsibility’

Musk expressed his support for Trump, a Republican, just minutes after he was nearly assassinated at a rally last month.

But they don’t always see eye to eye.

The tech billionaire, who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for more than 20 years, revealed that he voted Democratic before turning against Biden, who supports unions and did not invite the Tesla owner to the 2021 Electric Vehicle Summit.

The company is facing multiple federal investigations, which puts Musk on the same side as Trump, who faces more than a dozen felony charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Musk lifted the ban on the former president’s account when he bought Twitter in 2022. But he also endorsed Trump’s Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, and ran a glitchy campaign on the platform.

He has since increasingly focused on priorities shared by the far right of the Republican Party, expressing anger at alleged censorship by conservatives and spreading inflammatory and false news about immigration.

Commenting on the recent unrest in the UK, Musk claimed that “civil war is inevitable” and shared a false post about “internment camps.”

Musk’s false or misleading statements about the U.S. election have been viewed nearly 1.2 billion times on X, according to a new analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The European Union, which is investigating X under laws requiring digital companies to properly police online content, sent a letter to Musk on Monday reminding him of his legal obligation to prevent “harmful” content from spreading on the platform.

“With great audiences comes great responsibility,” the EU’s top digital official Thierry Breton said in a post on the platform, along with a letter outlining Musk’s obligations under EU law to combat illegal content and disinformation.

Breton expressed concern about the “risk of potentially harmful content being amplified in the EU,” citing Trump’s interview and Musk’s comments on the riots.