Last night, former President Donald Trump returned to X, the social media site once known as Twitter in the most bombastic form possible: a livestream with the site’s now-owner Elon Musk. The interview on Space, X’s platform for live audio conversations, covered everything from illegal immigration to union busting. At one point, Trump and Musk emphasized the need for an American leader who would 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 have some striking similarities — giant egos, a love of attention and social media, yet a sense of victimhood at the same time. . (Vice President Kamala Harris may love Venn diagrams, but she has to hate this intersection.)
Trump was banned after the Jan. 6 incident and reinstated when Musk took over, only returning to the platform for yesterday’s conversation. Both Musk and Trump promoted Interview as a the marquee entertainment eventMusk promised it would be “unscripted with no limits on content, so should be highly entertaining!” Yet the two men grappled with mostly predictable topics: the U.S. border, crime, and yet more about the border. The interview was another opportunity for Trump to insult and make false statements, with no pushback from his interviewer — even when Trump told Musk, the CEO of an EV company, that he planned to “drill, baby, drill” him. Second term
The live stream started late by about an hour due to technical issues. About 20 minutes after it starts, mask wrote That appears to be a “massive DDOS attack on X”. (A DDoS attack deliberately disrupts a site by flooding it with traffic; it wouldn’t be accurate to call it a DDoS attack if a lot of people want to tune in organically.) X’s previous space events have also been flawed — one between Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last May. Live Convo, where DeSantis announced his presidential bid, devastated While more than 500,000 people tried to listen. Before Trump’s interview, Musk said X would conduct stress tests to make sure the livestream could handle the traffic. Managed the top livestreams on YouTube and Twitch Millions of concurrent viewers Before, and regularly enjoyed by the most popular streamers on those platforms hundreds of thousands of the audience
Today, Trump returned to Truth Social, the social media site he owns the majority of, to praise Musk and Out against the media To report technical issues delaying the livestream.
“I absolutely hate the fake news media,” he wrote. “So bad for our country!”
Trump and Musk have a rocky history
Trump and Musk have not always been on good terms. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Musk a CNBC interview that Trump “wasn’t the right guy”, noting that he didn’t have the “character to reflect well on the United States”. Still, Musk initially developed a friendly relationship with the president once Trump was in office, even agreeing to join Two White House Advisory Councils. he is fast resignation After Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.
Then, at a rally in 2022, Trump claimed Musk told him he voted for him in 2016, calling the billionaire “bad artist” Musk sniped back that Trump should “ride off into the sunset” and responded by writing on Trump Truth Social that Musk had come to the Oval Office to ask for help “for all his subsidized projects” and that he could have told Musk Get down on his knees and beg.
A fact check on Trump and Musk on immigration
One topic the two men kept coming back to was immigration, and a scourge of crime sweeping the nation by unsuspecting immigrants. Trump said more than 20 million people crossed the US border illegally under President Joe Biden, much higher. Estimates from experts. He repeated Unsubstantiated claims that many of them came from prisons and mental institutions and called them “stone cold killers in many cases”.
Trump and Musk agreed that immigrant crime was “destroying” cities like New York and San Francisco. “They just let violent criminals into New York,” Musk said. “The only one they’re going to judge is Donald Trump,” the former president interjected. In fact, violent crime declined in US cities in the first half of 2024.
Now that seems to be water under the bridge. Officially Musk approval Trump on the day of his assassination attempt in July, and is supporting A Super PACs Aiming to get 800,000 Americans in swing states to vote for Trump. D The Wall Street Journal It was recently reported that the two now speak on the phone several times a month to discuss topics such as “immigration, technology and science”.
Why do you see eye to eye?
As the conversation wound down, Trump congratulated Musk on getting “60 to 70 million” listeners, adding that the number of passive views of the event seemed to be wrong with the number of people who tuned in (just over 1 million). Musk thought the interview’s total views would eventually be in the hundreds of millions.
It’s a moment that sums up what these two men have in common — a penchant for self-improvement and Their accomplishments are inflated. They both have a habit to say arsonist Things, whether on camera or online, and have used social media to grow a passionate fan base around the culture of their personalities
Trump has been largely absent from X since his reelection in November 2022, posting primarily on Truth Social. He’s under an exclusivity clause that limits what non-political posts he can make outside of Truth Social — but this interview appears to fall under an exemption because it related to politics. Yesterday, leading up to the interview, Trump made a series of posts on X to boost his presidential campaign, pinning a campaign ad to the top of his profile.
Are you better now than when I was president?
Our economy is broken. Our borders have been erased. We are a decadent nation.
Make the American Dream Affordable Again. Make America Safe Again. Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024
Before August 12, Trump hadn’t posted on X in nearly a year.
Now, though, Musk and Trump are also united in personal grievances and feelings of oppression. Trump has charged that Democrats have weaponized the legal system against him, citing the many criminal investigations he is under. “The Biden administration has done something that’s never been done in this country, and it’s their political opponent — me — getting away with this bullshit,” Trump said. A few days ago Dr. Kasturi Posted a graphic (whose origins are unclear) portrays himself and his political views in X as resisting oppression – much like Luke Skywalker. Star WarsIn Katniss Everdeen The Hunger Gamesor Neo In matrix. “You know when it’s fiction,” the image reads. “You refuse to see it when that’s the reality you’re living in.”
Musk expressed outrage that people portrayed him as a “far-right guy,” which is absurd because I’m building electric vehicles,” he said. “I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama’s hand when he was president.” Although Musk said that He would have voted for the Democrats, in 2022 he did announcement He will start voting Republican because the Dems have become a party of “division and hate.” Over the past year, he has made repeated statements echoing white supremacy “Great Replacement” theorywhich led to accusations that a white supplantation conspiracy was underway Undocumented immigrants In the United States he has consistently dismissed LGBTQ+ equality, showing special contempt for Transgender People criticized Musk’s daughter, who is trans Treatment of her gender identity In an Instagram thread.
A fact check on Trump and Musk on inflation
Turning to economics, both men blame excess government spending during the pandemic as a primary cause of inflation. Economist typically features Recent US inflation is a mix of factors — not just government spending, but also supply chain disruptions combined with rising consumer demand. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a major Covid-19 stimulus package, was signed into law by Trump.
There were many oddities the two men touched on during their conversation at X, highlighting their shared chaos — like when Musk built tunnels to “solve traffic.” Trump praised China’s high-speed rail system, but Musk mentioned tunnels for Tesla cars, e.g Las Vegas Loop. While both agreed that Harris was a “far left” politician, Trump repeated his accusation that Biden’s decision to step down from the presidency was a “coup” by the Democratic Party. Regarding government overspending, Trump announced that he would close the Department of Education and “take education back to the states” during his second term. The former president also appeared to praise Musk for that Mass firing of disgruntled Twitter workers By the end of 2022. “I won’t name the company,” he said, “but they go on strike and you say, ‘Well, you’re all gone.'” After X’s interview, the United Auto Workers sued. Federal labor charges along with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Trump and Musk of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers.”
At the top of the interview, Musk said he wanted to show what Trump was like outside of an adversarial interview, though the former president is famous for holding back. countless gatherings where he speaks freely. “It’s hard to get an idea of someone without actually hearing them speak,” Musk claimed, adding that the event was aimed at “open-minded independent voters.” It remains to be seen how many voters were swayed by Trump and Musk’s vibe.
