Rambling Trump, Musk’s interview tainted by technical problems

After technical issues postponed the start of the event for more than forty minutes, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sat Monday for a cordial two-hour discussion with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Musk’s social media platform X.

Though his allegation could not be confirmed, Musk, who supports Trump, attributed the problems on a distributed denial-of- service assault, in which a server or network is overloaded with traffic in an effort to shut it down.

Trump congratulated Musk on the volume of people wanting to tune in, trying to make the situation a good one. A counter on X revealed that at moments throughout the protracted exchange, 1.3 million individuals were listening.

The technological problems reminded me of a similar incident on X in May 2023, in which problems on the platform caused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to have a disorganized start to his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump teased DeSantis on his own, social media network, Truth Social, at the time. “My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!–)” Trump published, “Yours does not.”

Musk had said, ahead of Monday’s event: “Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.” X did not answer calls for specifics or proof of the claimed cyberattack.

With the Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO praising Trump for his bravery during the attempt on his life last month, and Trump thanking Musk for his readiness to dismiss workers seeking better circumstances, the two men traded compliments often.

“You’re the best cutter,” Trump declared. “I mean, just look at what you produce. You come in and just ask: “You want to quit?” They go on strike; I will not name the firm here. You then say: “That’s okay, you’re all gone.'”

Despite Republican hostility to governmental funding for electric carmakers like Tesla, Musk, the richest person on Earth, declared his support for Trump soon after his attempted assassination. Musk has turned rightward recently, albeit supporting Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020.

As the interview ended, he advised Trump, “I think we’re at a fork in the road of destiny, of civilization, and I think we need to take the right path, and I think you’re the right path.”

The conversation with Musk gave Trump an unvarnished opportunity to express his typical combination of complaints, personal insults, and inflated or untrue assertions.

Musk let Trump lead the discussion and refrained from questioning his false claims, such as the assumption that bacon costs had quadrupled four or five times or that other nations were exporting criminals from their jails across the southern U.S. border.

Studies reveal that immigrants—including illegal immigrants—do not have a greater crime rate than native-born Americans.

Trump’s speech was his most recent attempt to take front stage from his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose 11th-hour entry into the contest energized her party and increased Democratic donations.

Since Harris supplanted Biden as the party nominee three weeks ago, she has dominated headlines with a series of high-spirited events. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week might provide even another boost for her momentum.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” a Harris campaign spokesman, Joseph Costello, said in a statement following the interview.

Many listeners on X said the former president sounded at many occasions as if he had a lisp. Regarding Trump’s address, the Trump team answered no requests for comments.

Harriss MOMENTUM

Referring to Harris as “third rate,” “incompetent,” and “a radical left lunatic,” Trump repeatedly ridiculed her.

He later complimented her appearance, nevertheless.

Regarding a photograph of Harris on Time magazine’s cover, Trump remarked, “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live.” Referring to his wife Melanie Trump, he said, “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania.”

He also voiced resentment about Harris’s replacement for Biden on the Democratic slate.

Claiming mistakenly that Biden stepping off the ticket was a “coup,” Trump added, “She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started.”

Though he is currently behind Harris in several of the same battleground areas considered to be crucial for the Nov. 5 election, Trump had been topping Biden in many surveys of such states.

Long a skeptic of electric cars, Trump has changed his mind since Musk’s support. On Monday, he called the Tesla electric automobiles “incredible.”

He also complimented North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin—all authoritarian strongmen—as at the “top of their game.”

Trump Reversed on X

Resuming an account that had been the primary means of communication in past campaigns and his four years in the White House, Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, with a series of postings on Monday for the first time in a year. His followers’ Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the main focus of the posts.

Claiming worries he might inspire violence, Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was reinstated a month into Musk’s ownership of X following the Jan. 6 attack.

Although Trump often writes on his Truth Social platform, which debuted in February 2022, his posts there have a far smaller readership than on X.

To assist Trump’s campaign, Musk launched an outside super PAC spending outfit after repeating Trump’s erroneous allegations on voting fraud and Biden’s immigration policy. Now under inquiry in Michigan for suspected breaches of state rules on voter information is the political action committee.