Karma is A botched interview riddled with technical glitches. Donald Trump’s livestream with Elon Musk on X Spaces failed before it could even begin. On Monday evening, a major glitch on the Musk-owned platform delayed the event by 40 minutes.
The service's problems have brought to mind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's erratic campaign on X (formerly Twitter) last year, which Trump mocked at the time, writing on Truth Social: “Wow! DeSanctus's Twitter launch is a disaster!”
As things turned around on Monday, Musk assured listeners that “worst case scenario, we’ll continue with fewer live listeners and post the conversation later.” The interview with Trump eventually began around 8:40 p.m. ET, and the former president launched into his usual litany of bigotry, talking about immigration, crowd sizes and his friendly relations with dictators.
During the confusing interview, Trump bizarrely cheered on the Tesla CEO for firing striking workers. He praised the former president while Musk laughed. “You’re the greatest disrupter. You just walk in and say, ‘Do you want to resign?’ They go on strike, I won’t name the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s okay, everybody’s gone … every single one of you is gone.’”
While Trump was raving about the size of his crowd and trying desperately to attack Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk proved to be an unskilled communicator and struggled to get a word in — leading to a bizarre, meandering conversation that lasted more than two hours.
Shortly after the interview ended, the vice president issued a statement on “whatever that is.”
“Donald Trump’s extremism and his dangerous ‘Project 2025’ agenda are a feature, not a bug, of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to hear it,” the statement read. “Trump’s entire campaign is in the service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed billionaires who will sell out the middle class and who can’t afford to stream in 2024.”
The high-profile interview — which Musk has called “unscripted and without subject matter” — comes at a sensitive moment for Trump’s presidential campaign, which looked like a giant before President Joe Biden conceded the Democratic nomination to Vice President Harris last month. Trump now finds himself trailing in several major polls, and on the defensive as the recalcitrant Harris — aided by her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota — has taken control of the narrative around the race.
Musk is one of Trump’s most vocal allies, but the former president and the X founder haven’t always seen eye to eye. Musk said in 2022 that Trump needed to “ride into the sunset,” and Trump responded by mocking Musk for his “electric cars that don’t drive long enough, self-driving cars that crash, or rockets that go nowhere, without which he would be worthless.” A few months later, Musk said he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary.
DeSantis' primary campaign has failed, and Musk has been cozying up to Trump for months at least. The New York Times In March, the billionaire reportedly met with Trump and other potential donors in Florida. Musk responded by writing that he wouldn’t donate to either presidential candidate, but in early July, Bloomberg reported that he had donated a “significant sum” to a pro-Trump political action committee.
Musk stopped pretending to be shy after the July assassination attempt on Trump, writing on the X website that he “fully” supported Trump. Shortly after the endorsement, Wall Street Journal He was reportedly donating a whopping $45 million a month to a pro-Trump political action committee, a report Musk later denied. Since then, Musk — who has long spread right-wing propaganda and misinformation on X — has been praising Trump and attacking the Democratic ticket.
Meanwhile, Trump has been talking fondly about Musk. “We have to make life better for our smart people,” Trump said at a July 20 rally, referring to Musk, the world’s richest man. “I love Elon Musk,” Trump added, referring to a report about how much money Musk was supposedly planning to give him.
It is no surprise, then, that Trump interviewed Musk, or that he resumed posting on X in anticipation of the interview, releasing some campaign videos and a message lamenting that “America is in decline.”
Trump’s only other post on X since he was banned from the platform after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a photo of himself after his indictment in Georgia last August. Trump posts regularly on Truth Social, of course, and the stock price of TMTG, the company that owns the social network, It started to deteriorate. After Trump dusted off his X account on Monday, Trump owns a huge stake in TMTG, so posting on a rival social network and hurting the stock price is pretty significant.
