Trump and Musk talk assassination attempt and deportation in glitched X chat – Orange County Register

Steve Peoples and Meg Kinnard

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump recounted in vivid detail the assassination attempt on him and promised the biggest deportation in U.S. history in a high-profile return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but the conversation was plagued by technical glitches.

“If I hadn't turned my back, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, no matter how much I like you,” Trump told X owner Elon Musk.

Musk, a past critic of Trump, said the resilience shown by the Republican candidate in responding to last month's shootings was crucial to national security.

“There are some really tough guys out there,” Musk said. “If they don't think the president of the United States is tough, they're going to do what they want.”

The rare public conversation between Trump and Musk was extremely cordial but revealed little new about Trump's plans for a second term, with the former president spending much of the conversation discussing the recent assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.

Still, the meeting highlighted how much the U.S. political landscape has changed less than four years after Trump was permanently banned by former executives of the social media platforms for spreading disinformation that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and undermined the foundations of American democracy.

Under Musk's leadership, this disinformation flourished at X, but it was largely ignored in his conversations with Trump, apart from a passing reference to a “rigged election.”

The session was intended as a way for the former president to reach out directly to millions of voters, and also a chance for X, a heavily political platform, to make a hard-fought comeback.

It didn't start out as planned.

More than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, the interview had not yet begun, even though more than 878,000 users had connected to the meeting, and many users were seeing the message “Details Not Available.”

Trump's team posted that “X interview is jammed with listeners logging in,” and as the meeting began, Musk apologized for the delayed start, blaming a “massive attack” that had overwhelmed the company's systems.

Trump supporters openly expressed their dissatisfaction.

“UNAVAILABLE??? I planned my day around this,” wrote conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

“Tell Elon we can't participate,” posted billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.

Ahead of the event, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “several system scaling tests” to accommodate the large number of expected attendees.

The shaky start is reminiscent of a social media conversation between Musk and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023. The Republican governor had used the social media platform as a way to officially announce his presidential run, but it was marred by technical issues and a disastrous turn of events in which he was overloaded with more than 400,000 people calling in.

Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic rival, noted that Trump had mocked DeSantis at the time.

“Wow! DeSanctus' Twitter launch is a disaster! His entire campaign is going to be a disaster. Watch!,” Trump wrote Monday in a message reposted by the Harris campaign.

Monday's meeting also highlighted the evolving personal relationship between two of the world's most powerful men, Trump and Musk, who went from bitter rivals to unlikely allies during the election season.

Musk, who described himself as a Democrat until a few years ago, suggested Trump was too old to run for president again in 2022. Still, he formally endorsed Trump last month, two days after the assassination attempt on Trump.

During the meeting, Trump welcomed the idea of ​​Musk joining the next administration to help cut government waste, and Musk volunteered to serve on a future “Government Efficiency Commission.”

“You're the best cutter,” Trump told Musk. “I need an Elon Musk. I need someone with strength, courage and smarts. I want to close the Department of Education and give education back to the states.”

Before announcing his endorsement, the tech CEO had already been working informally to support a pro-Trump super PAC known as America PAC, which is currently under investigation by election officials for allegedly trying to collect misleading data from voters.

Trump, meanwhile, has toned down his criticism of electric cars, citing Musk's leadership at Tesla. And at least on Monday, Trump made a strong return to Musk's social media platforms, with the former president making at least eight posts in the hours before his interview with Musk.

Long before he supported Trump, Musk had been moving increasingly to the right in his tweets and actions, using X to try to sway political discourse around the world. He's sparred with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he called the “woke mind virus,” and spread the false claim that Democrats are secretly flying in immigrants to vote in US elections.

Musk also reinstated previously banned accounts, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump, who was banned from the platform (then Twitter Inc.) two days after the Jan. 6 riots because the company cited “the risk of further incitement of violence.” By November 2022, Musk had bought the company and Trump's account was reinstated, but the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, claiming he was happier on his own Truth Social site, which he launched during the ban.

Trump's following on X is far greater than that of Truth Social, which went public earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his little-used X account has 88 million followers. Musk, who hosted the interview, has more than 193 million followers on his account.

The chat was a reminder that the world is watching and prompted a precautionary warning from Europe.

Thierry Breton, a French business executive and European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market, warned Musk that airing the interview with Trump could “amplify harmful content.” In a letter posted to X, Breton called on Musk to “ensure that X complies with” EU laws, including the Digital Services Act, adopted in 2022 to address a number of issues, including disinformation.

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang called on the EU to “focus on its own business instead of trying to interfere in the US presidential election.”