Musk Seeks to Aid Trump in Countering Harris’ Momentum

The world’s richest man and a former president, who might make a comeback, found common ground on nearly every topic.

On Monday night, tech mogul Elon Musk opened his X platform to Donald Trump, providing him with a direct channel free of fact-checking for his misleading statements, conspiracy theories, and extreme views, as Trump attempts to counter the rise of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

This conversation marked another remarkable moment in a presidential campaign that has defied logic with its dramatic turns, including an assassination attempt on Trump and President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race.

During a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 8, 2024, former President Donald Trump spoke, coinciding with technical difficulties that affected the start of Musk’s interview with him.

The former president has been struggling to cope with the rapid rise of the new Democratic nominee. Throughout their lengthy discussion, Musk seemed to use his influence and platform to coach Trump on building a stronger case against Harris.

“She’s a believer in being radical left,” Trump said of his Democratic rival, who has erased his polling lead in just three weeks as a candidate. The former president, who tried to overturn an election he lost, also baselessly claimed that Biden was illegally removed to make way for Harris. “She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started, and say what you want, this was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States,” Trump complained.

Musk concurred with Trump that Harris was a radical leftist and flattered Trump by suggesting he was strong while his Democratic opponents were weak. Referring to America’s adversaries, Musk said, “Do they fear the American president, or is it someone they do not respect and do not fear? Let’s look at the footage of the assassination. Like, okay, you know, President Trump is like, don’t mess with me.”

Having already endorsed Trump, Musk left no doubt that he wants to see him win a second term. “You are the path to prosperity. And I think Kamala is the opposite,” he told Trump.

With significant business interests that could benefit from favorable policies under the next administration, Musk offered the Republican nominee an audience of at least 1.3 million concurrent listeners during the most challenging moment of his campaign so far. He predicted that at least 100 million people would consume the content in the coming days.

Both Trump and Musk stood to gain a lot.

During the event, Trump — who spent months criticizing Biden over his age, speech difficulties, and occasional verbal slip-ups — appeared to be lisping or slurring his words. It was unclear whether an audio issue was to blame. When asked for clarification, the ex-president’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, responded, “Must be your hearing.”

The friendly conversation between the business tycoon and the former president highlighted what each stood to gain.

Musk was able to communicate his views on immigration, the economy, reducing government regulation, and tax cuts to a potential future president known for transactional leadership. Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, a major player in the US space program, and Tesla, which produces electric vehicles, could be impacted by government policy changes. The entire conversation was full of potential conflicts of interest. No ordinary American would have a similar opportunity to directly influence a potential future president.

At one point, Musk even offered to take a position in the US government — possibly as part of an efficiency commission to reduce the size of the administrative state. Trump expressed enthusiasm for the idea, noting that Musk is a great “cutter.”

Trump reaped significant benefits from investing over two hours of his time. Musk did not challenge any of his lies or misrepresentations — such as his claim that 60 million undocumented migrants would invade the United States if he lost in November.

During the discussion, Musk minimized the threat of global warming while defending his pioneering electric vehicle empire. Meanwhile, Trump warned of the threat of “nuclear warming,” which he claimed posed a greater danger than “global warming.” It was unclear if he was referring to nuclear power, which Musk argued was “not as scary as people think.”

This event exemplified how presidential politics have been transformed by social media and the fragmentation of traditional journalism. Trump may not have become president without Twitter, as his rise as a political force in 2016 coincided with the platform’s heyday. His ability to exploit the new medium like no other politician made that year’s presidential election a unique blend of a man and his moment.

Eight years later, under Musk’s leadership, who advocates for unfettered free speech, X has dismantled many safeguards against the spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories on the site. It is, therefore, an ideal platform for the ex-president to escape the constraints of traditional media and weave his narrative, which is hugely popular among his millions of supporters.

Republicans are complaining about what they perceive as flattering media coverage of Harris’s nascent campaign. However, few candidates have had as easy a time as the Republican nominee did on X on Monday night.

In a sign of the international political questions raised by X’s evolution, a European commissioner, Thierry Breton, wrote to Musk to warn him to prevent the “amplification of harmful content” that could be accessed by consumers inside the bloc.

Cheung warned on X that the EU should “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the US Presidential election,” in an exchange that suggested already tense relations between the Trump team and Musk and Europe.

After years of avoiding Twitter and X, Trump had high praise for Musk.

On Monday night, Trump made numerous false statements and exaggerations, including the number of migrants crossing the border, the extent of the inflation crisis, which has since cooled, his legal issues, the current administration’s energy policy, and his familiar claim that foreign nations were sending their prisoners across the southern US border.

There is no doubt that many of Trump’s voters, listening in or hearing highlights of the conversation in the coming days, will agree with much of what the former president said, underscoring his political viability even after Harris transformed the race.

At times, Trump presented a more coherent and focused argument for a second term than he has in recent days when he seemed disoriented by the shift in a race he believed he was poised to win against Biden. He and Musk accused the current president and vice president of adopting spending policies that fueled the inflation that has been painful for millions of Americans.

However, Trump’s frequent tangents and promotion of conspiracy theories also highlighted why many voters dislike him and why there are concerns about his appeal to suburban and female voters in battleground states.

Initially, the session seemed to be a metaphor for Trump’s missteps, as it was delayed by technical glitches. Musk claimed a distributed denial-of-service attack was to blame, although it was not immediately possible to confirm that bad actors were responsible. “There is a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk said.

The Harris campaign quickly responded by posting a Trump Truth Social post from last year criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the troubled start to his primary campaign in a glitchy Twitter Spaces event with Musk.

The event marked Trump’s return to X, formerly known as Twitter, from which he was banned by the site’s previous owners after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. Musk restored his account.

Anyone who listened to the full two-hour conversation would have learned more about Musk’s evolving political views — and his growing willingness to use his power and wealth to express them — than anything new about Trump. However, the ex-president was effusively grateful for a new friend in a time of political need.

“You’re an amazing guy, you’ve done an incredible job. You are a great inspiration to people,” Trump said before saying goodbye.