Karma is a botched interview plagued with technical problems. Donald Trump’s livestream with Elon Musk on X Spaces failed before it even began. On Monday evening, a major glitch on the Musk-owned platform delayed the event by 40 minutes.
The service troubles echoed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bumpy campaign rollout on X (formerly Twitter) last year, which Trump mocked at the time, writing on Truth Social: “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!”
As the tables turned on Monday, Musk assured listeners that “worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.” The interview with Trump eventually began around 8:40 p.m. E.T. and the former president proceeded to rollout his usual laundry list of bigotry and rambled about immigration, crowd sizes, and his chummy relationships with dictators.
During the bumbling interview, Trump bizarrely cheered the Tesla CEO for firing striking workers. “You’re the greatest cutter,” praised the former president as Musk chuckled. “You just walk in and you just say, ‘You wanna quit?’ They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone … Every one of you is gone.'”
As Trump rambled about his crowd sizes and desperately attempted to attack Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk proved to be an unskilled interviewer and struggled to get a word in — making for a weird, meandering conversation that lasted over two hours.
Shortly after the interview ended, the vice president issued a statement on “whatever that was.”
“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,” read the statement. “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.”
The high-profile interview — which Musk advertised as “unscripted with no limits on subject matter” — comes at a delicate moment for Trump’s presidential campaign, which seemed like a juggernaut before President Joe Biden ceded the Democratic nomination to Vice President Harris last month. Trump now finds himself trailing in several key polls, and on the defensive as the insurgent Harris — with the help of running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota — have taken control of the narrative around the race.
Musk is one of Trump’s most vocal public allies, but the former president and the X owner haven’t always gotten along. Musk said in 2022 that Trump needed to “said into the sunset,” to which Trump responded by taunting Musk over his “electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless.” A few months later, Musk said he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary.
DeSantis’ primary campaign went down in flames, and Musk has now been cozying up to Trump for months, at least. The New York Times reported in March that the billionaire met with Trump and other prospective donors in Florida. Musk responded by writing that he would not be donating to either presidential candidate, but in early July Bloomberg reported that he had donated a “sizable amount” to a pro-Trump super PAC.
Musk stopped playing coy following the assassination attempt against Trump in July, writing on X that he endorses Trump “fully.” Soon after the endorsement, The Wall Street Journal reported that he was donating a whopping $45 million per month to a pro-Trump super PAC, a report Musk later denied. Musk — who has long been spread right-wing propaganda and misinformation on X — has since been praising Trump and attacking the Democratic ticket.
Trump, meanwhile, has been speaking fondly of Musk. “We have to make life good for our smart people,” he said at a rally July 20, referring to Musk, the world’s richest person. “I love Elon Musk,” he added, touting the report about how much money Musk was supposedly planning to give him.
It isn’t surprising, then, that Trump gave Musk an interview, or that, in anticipation of the interview, he’s resumed posting on X, posting some campaign videos and a missive lamenting how “America is in decline.”
Trump’s only other X post since he was banned from the platform following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was his mugshot after he was indicted in Georgia last August. Trump regularly posts on Truth Social, of course, and the stock price of TMTG, the company that owns the social network, started to tank after Trump dusted off his X account on Monday. Trump has a massive stake in TMTG, so posting on a competing social network and hurting the share price is pretty notable.
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