Elon Musk yesterday succeeded in getting Donald Trump to use X, the platform that he wielded as a bully pulpit throughout his presidency, but has generally avoided ever since, even after Musk reversed a ban placed on his account in response to the January 6 insurrection by the company’s then owners.
But Trump’s return to X may not last. The former president has not tweeted since his interview with Musk last night, though he has made several posts on Truth Social, the X-like platform that he owns, and which has become one of his primary mouthpieces over the past four years. We’ll let you know if that changes.
Updated
Elon Musk also said that his interview with Donald Trump generated 1bn in both views and discussions:
Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion https://t.co/s8x8QmdmnY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
It was impossible to verify Musk’s statement, but it’s worth noting that Trump, in the interview yesterday, implied that Musk showed him that tens of millions of accounts were listening in, when X’s public count showed that number was closer to 1m.
Updated
Musk says he would be willing to interview Harris, too
Following his conversation with Donald Trump last night, Elon Musk said he would be willing to host a similar interview with Kamala Harris:
Happy to host Kamala on an 𝕏 Spaces too
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Musk proposed using X’s Spaces feature, which allows live audio broadcasts. Should Harris take him up on the offer, one wonders if he will first fix whatever issue caused the more than 40-minute delay in beginning his interview with Trump last night.
Updated
George Santos, the former Republican New York congressman, is appearing in court for a pre-trial hearing today in the federal fraud case against him.
Santos has pleaded not guilty to charges of defrauding supporters, illegally receiving benefits and lying to Congress.
The trial is set to begin with jury selection on 9 September, and the parties have proposed for opening statements to begin 16 September.
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota will defend her seat on Tuesday in the state Democratic primary, a rematch against Don Samuels that comes two years after she barely eked out a victory against him.
Tuesday’s race is the last in a series of heated primaries for the progressive “squad” of House Democrats who have been vocal in their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Her fellow squad members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri were recently defeated by candidates supported by a deluge of pro-Israel spending. But Omar faces a lower-key race.
The two-term congresswoman became the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in the US House of Representatives in 2019. While in office, she has allied herself with the left wing of the Democratic party, serving as the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus and backing key progressive measures like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
Even before the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s ensuing offensive, Omar had established herself as a vocal critic of Israel. She famously drew criticism in 2019 for quipping that US politicians’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”, in reference to donations from the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (Aipac). The comment drew accusations of antisemitism and she later apologized for it.
In the wake of the 7 October attacks, and as Israel escalated its retaliatory war, Omar was among the first in Congress to call for a ceasefire. She has spoken out in support of the university encampments in solidarity with Gaza. Her daughter was suspended from Barnard College for taking part.
Updated
The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, will address union members in Los Angeles today as part of his first solo campaign stop since he was announced as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
Walz is scheduled to deliver remarks at the convention of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the nation’s largest public sector unions, in Los Angeles today at 12.35 pm PT.
He is also expected to deliver remarks at a campaign reception in Newport, California, at 2.30pm PT today.
Updated
Oscar Wilde once described the English country gentleman galloping after a fox as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”. Elon Musk interviewing Donald Trump surely qualifies as the incoherent in full pursuit of the unendurable.
The men’s joint appearance in an audio conversation on X on Monday night was, as expected, a display of two planet-sized egos, toxic masculinity and breathtaking mendacity. More surprisingly it was also dull, like sitting with two drunks at a bar trying to set the world to rights over more than two hours.
The main message: if Trump doesn’t win the election, and if Musk doesn’t become the emperor of the universe, you’re not going to have a country any more.
Musk and Trump’s banal chatter about subjects such as radioactive vegetables and the defeat of Napoleon made you crave a return to what came first: a blissful 40 minutes of wallpaper music. That was because crippling technical glitches left thousands of people unable to join.
Read the full sketch from our Washington DC bureau chief: The Musk-Trump X interview: a surprisingly dull meeting of two planet-sized egos
Donald Trump returned to the social media platform that turbocharged his career for a live discussion with Elon Musk. The former president unleashed familiar rambling, vitriolic talking points to a sympathetic Musk.
Updated
Donald Trump sat down with billionaire Elon Musk on Monday for a rambling and vitriolic interview that revisited many of the former president’s most divisive talking points.
The interview on X, which is owned by Musk, got off to an inauspicious start, with technical issues that initially prevented many users from watching the conversation. Musk blamed the delay on a “massive” cyber-attack, but the cause of the glitch was not entirely clear.
After the interview started more than 40 minutes late, Trump – who at times appeared to have a lisp – began the conversation by recounting the failed assassination attempt against him last month at Musk’s request. Although Trump previously said he would only share the story once at the Republican convention last month, he again discussed in detail his brush with death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which he said he would visit again in October.
Trump told Musk:
It was a miracle. If I hadn’t turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now, as much as I like you.
Here’s a clip from the interview:
Harris campaign condemns Trump's 'extremism and dangerous agenda' after Musk interview
Good morning US politics readers. On Monday night, Donald Trump sat down with billionaire Elon Musk for an interview on X that began 45 minutes late, featured the Republican presidential nominee’s greatest hits and biggest lies, in which he denigrated immigrants and attempted to paint Kamala Harris as a “radical” leftist, repeatedly mispronounced her name, and called the Democratic presumptive nominee “beautiful”.
Throughout the conversation, the two men lavished praise and admiration on each other and at the end, Musk told Trump he was “on the right path”. Here are key takeaways from the event.
The Harris campaign condemned the interview as an example of Trump’s “extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda”. Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said:
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 live stream in the year 2024.
The interview came as Harris has pulled ahead in polls following the launch of her campaign last month. The Decision Desk HQ and the Hill’s national polling average now shows Harris with a 0.3% lead over Trump, who had a 3.3% advantage over Joe Biden before the president withdrew from the race.
Harris appears to be in an even stronger position in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which will likely determine the outcome of the election in November. According to a recent set of surveys conducted last week by the New York Times and Siena College, Harris now leads by four points in those three states, while prior polls showed a virtual tie or a slight Trump advantage in those states.
Here’s what else we’re watching:
12.20pm ET. Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, will depart the White House en route to New Orleans.
3.35pm. Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, will deliver remarks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Convention in Los Angeles. He will later deliver remarks at a campaign reception in Newport, California.
