This illustration photo shows former US President Donald Trump mugshot on X (formerly Twitter), on August 24, 2023. CHRIS DELMAS, AFP via Getty Images
So his answer, weirdly, was to sit down with Musk and talk to what would undoubtedly be a very online audience that doesn’t represent the broader electorate. Had the conversation gone off without a hitch, it still would have been odd and largely useless for Trump’s effort to halt Harris’ momentum.
Trump's interview with Elon Musk was an unmitigated disaster
But the online interview went off (the rails) with a multitude of hitches. X users erupted with either frustration or laughter as the planned start time passed, and nothing could be accessed. It took more than 40 minutes before the interview could start and be heard by anyone. It was amateur hour, the last thing a campaign struggling to project competence needed.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally held along his running mate Senator JD Vance, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., August 3, 2024. Megan Varner, REUTERS
He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind. He was also badly slurring his words , raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being.
He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.
Elon Musk is no Barbara Walters – his interview skills stink
Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk speaks with other delegates on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Britain on Nov. 1, 2023. Leon Neal / Pool via REUTERS
Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert. He did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth, while occasionally going on the kind of odd right-wing tangents you’d expect from a man too rich to ever be told to pipe down.
I’m not going to quote anything Trump said in the interview because it was either too stupid to merit transcription or a mere repetition of the nonsense he spouts at every rally he holds.
A big part of Trump’s problem right now is he has become almost unbearably boring. Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.
Musk gave Trump the same gift he gave Ron DeSantis. Whomp whomp.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May 30, 2020. Jonathan Ernst, REUTERS
So for Trump, sitting down with a rich weirdo few people like and slurring his way through an interview that failed to launch was, in the words of one Donald J. Trump, “a DISASTER!”
Musk, with his social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance, made DeSantis look like a fool. And now he’s done the same to Trump.
Heck, if Musk keeps this up, I might start to like him.
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Comments / 0