Trump and Musk Sit Down for “Interview”
By Colin A. Warren
On August 12, Donald Trump sat down with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to discuss X Spaces. Musk insisted that it was not an interview but a conversation, noting that it’s “hard to catch a vibe about someone” when they’re in an adversarial interview.
Over a million listeners tuned in at the start of the talk, which was delayed by nearly forty minutes due to technical issues.
Before they began chatting, Musk blamed the technical difficulties on a cyber-attack. The last banner political talk on the platform, when Musk interviewed a then-Republican candidate for President Ron DeSantis, was also marred by platform functionality issues.
Democratic opposition candidate Kamala Harris was quick to post Trump’s response to that DeSantis X debacle, which read: “Wow! The DeSantis TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
The discussion was seen as critical public relations for both entities. Trump’s lead in the polls has slumped since Harris took over the Democratic ticket, and it is widely considered that he needs to reinvigorate his campaign. Musk, who declared his allegiance to Trump on the day of his assassination attempt, has seen the value of the company hosting the conversation, X, fall by over 70% since his purchase of the company about two years ago.
They began the talk by recounting the assassination attempt on Trump, which Trump described with a hearty laugh as “Not pleasant!” As they parsed the details of the day, they brought up the fact that if Trump hadn’t turned his head to look at a video display of immigration numbers at the precise time the shot was taken, he would have been killed.
“Illegal immigration saved my life!” Trump joked.
Musk reminded the audience that he is an immigrant.
Trump made claims, with no evidence, that other countries take unauthorized immigrants “out of jails, prisons” and send them to the U.S. Trump said that Venezuela has “gotten rid” of their criminals, and then he claimed, falsely, that crime had dropped in that country by over 70%.
This was a striking claim to make now about Venezuela, where recent post-election protests have left twenty-three dead and over 2,000 people arrested, according to the United Nations.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in history,” Trump claimed of his potential second term as president.
Trump then drifted into his claims that he beat Biden in the last election. There is zero evidence to support these claims.
The two men then discussed the importance of being a formidable figure in international politics. Musk claimed that adversaries would “obviously have not been intimidated by Biden, and they certainly will not be intimidated by Kamala.”
Musk has a history of online aggressiveness; last year on X, he challenged fellow tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to a fight, amongst other pugnacious taunts on social media.
Trump then discussed his closeness to autocrats, including Russia’s Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. He claimed both the invasion of Ukraine and the attacks on Israel would not have happened if he were president.
Musk then recalled Trump’s exchanges with Jong-un on X (then Twitter), in which Trump demeaned and threatened the North Korean dictator.
“Those were some pretty epic tweets,” Musk said.
Trump touted how poor he made Iran during his presidency, which, he claimed, disabled Hamas and Hezbollah.
Then Trump insisted that “if you’re a history student, the first thing you learn is you cannot let Russia and China align.”
In July of this summer, U.S. and Canadian military fighter jets intercepted Chinese and Russian bombers in U.S. airspace off the coast of Alaska. An official from the Department of Defense said it was the first time they had seen the two countries drilling together.
Trump then stated that if he were elected, he would build an “Iron Dome” over the entire United States. This is in reference to the missile defense system that is installed, largely with American help, over Israel. “We’re going to have protection,” he said.
When the conversation pivoted to inflation, Musk felt the need to inject his definition of the monetary dilemma that has affected Americans strongly for the last few years, saying, “A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from. Inflation comes from government overspending…so if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply, and if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation.”
Musk then claimed that a trillion dollars is added to the deficit “roughly every 100 days.”
Trump then, oddly, lauded his administration’s military spending. Then he changed directions and talked about the cost of energy. He invoked the famous Palin slogan: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”
The two men then spent several minutes adulating one another for their perceived strengths in business and politics before pivoting back to inflation.
Trump appealed to youths who have never been able to save money because of inflation. Musk claimed that “inflation is effectively a tax on people that save money.”
Trump then falsely claimed that inflation was “the worst inflation we’ve had in one hundred years.” According to The New York Times, inflation reached 8% in 2022, the highest since 1981. Trump falsely claimed that bacon costs “four of five times more than it did a few years ago.” The average price of sliced bacon was $5.83 per pound in January 2021 and $6.83 per pound in June 2024.
Next, Trump brought up his previous campaign promise: “I want to close up the Department of Education.”
Many Alaskan politico pundits think that Governor Dunleavy is auditioning to be Trump’s Secretary of Education. If shuttering the Department of Education is the goal, Dunleavy might fit the bill because he has cut millions of dollars from the state’s education as governor. This year, he line-item vetoed $5.4 million of $20 million slated to increase the graduate program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks so that it can achieve the status of a top-tier research university; in 2020, he pushed the University of Alaska system, his alma mater, to the brink of failure by slashing $130 million, or 41%, from the budget.
The two men seemed to ease their stances on climate change-related issues collectively. Trump praised electric cars, which he has criticized throughout all his campaigns. Musk also commented that the oil and gas industry shouldn’t be “vilified.”
Trump then bragged about opening ANWAR, or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in Alaska to oil drilling. Biden banned all drilling in the refuge in September 2023. He then claimed that ANWAR has more oil than Saudia Arabia. An expert from the U.S. Geological Survey said this claim is false, explaining that Saudia Arabia has around 200 billion barrels of proven oil while ANWAR has around 10 billion.
Trump then joked about the rising oceans from climate change, claiming it would create lots more beachfront properties to profit from.
Trump soon pivoted to attack Kamala Harris, his opponent in the upcoming presidential election. He called her a “radical left San Francisco liberal” and said that she is “considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radial left lunatic.” He also said that Harris is “anti-Israel.”
The previous week, Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon, made the statement of Harris on social media, “She will always ensure Israel [can] defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel. She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
The bashing of Harris devolved into the bashing of her running-mate, Tim Walz, who, as Governor of Minnesota, signed a law providing free tampons for students grades 4 through 12. Trump ribbed Walz for supplying tampons for both boys’ and girls’ bathrooms and said that’s all he had to hear about him and called him “radical left.”
Walz was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, where he maintained a moderate voting record. He also served as a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
The conversation then broached censorship. Musk brought up a letter that he received from the European Union that urged him not to platform disinformation in reference to this discussion with Trump.
Musk’s online response to the letter was to post the letter on X, followed by a lewd meme directed at the EU. Musk kept rallying about his version of free speech. He claimed that the media attacked Trump “relentlessly, every day, often very unfairly” during his first term.
No other President has ever lied as many times as Trump has publicly. According to The Washington Post, Trump made false or misleading claims 30,573 times in his four years in office.
They spent the last twenty minutes of the two-hour talk summarizing much of what they had already discussed.
Musk claimed he was a “moderate-liberal” because he makes electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels, which help the environment. He failed to note how many billions of dollars he makes from those industries.
Both men, who are billionaires, agreed that the American Dream is dead and should be revived.
As part of Trump’s wrap-up, he said, “If something happens with this election...we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country.”