Trump rehashes familiar talking points on immigrants, Biden in X chat with Musk
Former President Donald Trump's conversation with Elon Musk on X Monday night started almost an hour late as the social media platform was plagued with technical difficulties before the two were connected for a conversation that covered illegal border crossings, the pandemic, and Trump's opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
For about 40 minutes, listeners who could get into X Spaces were greeted with hold music, with Musk eventually claiming on X that the site appeared to be facing "a massive DDOS," Distributed Denial of Service attack.
Eventually, at about a quarter to 9 p.m. ET, Musk kickstarted the conversation, praising the former president for how he handled the assassination attempt on his life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, mentioning Trump shouting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" as Secret Service took him off stage.
"When I stood up before the hand, before the, you know, the fist in the air, they didn't know if I was alive. Nobody did. And when I put the fist up, they were, they were just relieved and happy and thrilled, and the place went crazy," Trump told Musk as the two talked about the incident for over 20 minutes.
Throughout the conversation, Trump returned to familiar talking points, including praising authoritarian leaders, slamming and calling President Joe Biden names, and disparaging immigrants.
During their talk, one topic of contention came up between the two – climate change, though Musk called it "global warming." Musk repeatedly advocated for sustainable energy during the chat, while Trump continuously stumped for fossil fuels, claiming instead he's more concerned about "nuclear warming."
"I've heard, in terms of the fossil fuel, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity needed for the electric car, you know, fossil fuel is what really creates that, at the generating plants," Trump said after Musk talked about the possibility of air being uncomfortable to breathe in the future.
Musk pushed back, telling Trump he wasn't claiming "the house is on fire immediately," but that "it's probably better to move there faster than slower … without vilifying the oil and gas industry and without causing hardship in the short term."
Still, as he mentioned global threats, Trump joked there would be "more oceanfront property" due to rising sea levels and global warming.
"You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one 1/8 of an inch over the next 400 years, and you'll have more, you'll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power," Trump claimed.
Both men railed against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with Trump slamming her over the border, without mentioning he told the GOP members of the House to tank the recent comprehensive immigration bill that GOP Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford helped author.
"She's saying she was strong on the border. 'We're going to be strong.' Well, she doesn't have to say [it]; she could close it up right now. … They could do things right now. It's horrible," Trump said.
During the X conversation, Trump once again claimed – without evidence – that President Biden leaving the race was a "coup."
Trump continued to complain about Harris throughout the talk, bringing up her new TIME magazine cover, saying she looked like his wife, Melania Trump. He also argued that the vice president had gotten a makeover in the media.
"She is terrible. She's terrible, but she's getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on TIME magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing and actually looked very much like our great first lady, Melania … She didn't look like Kamala," Trump said, mispronouncing the vice president's name.
Wrapping up just after Trump praised Musk for the audience size of their Spaces chat, which seemed to reach around 1.3 million at peak, Musk reaffirmed his support for Trump.
"I think we're in massive trouble, frankly, with a Kamala administration, and that's my honest opinion," Musk said. "I think, really, it's essential that, that you win for the good of the country this election."
Reacting to the chat, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign slammed the pair as "self-obsessed rich guys."
"Donald Trump's extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com. 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 statement from the Harris campaign rep said.
The campaign also poked fun at the more than 40-minute wait for the interview to begin by resharing on the Kamala HQ Truth Social account a previous Trump post on Truth Social which criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign launch event on X last year that was also delayed by glitches.
"Wow! the DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!"
Last May, DeSantis had planned to begin his audio-only campaign launch with Musk, but repeated issues and crashes stalled the start of the Spaces event for almost 30 minutes, after alternating stretches of silence and crackling audio.
At one point, the Spaces was abruptly ended and then restarted -- all as Musk and others could apparently be heard discussing the malfunctions behind the scenes.
Musk suggested during the DeSantis presidential campaign broadcast that the problems were due to strain on the platform's servers and "scaling issues" because his own account was involved and has a following of 140 million users.
