Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk spoke with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on social network X on Monday as part of the platform’s Spaces feature, where users host live streams.
The interview, scheduled for 8 p.m. US time and expected by hundreds of thousands of users around the world, ran into major overlaps and started 40 minutes late. Musk said X was subjected to a “massive DDOS attack,” which he said caused the broadcast to be delayed.
Musk did not mention his differences with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the UK riots and free speech, but did raise the issue of an open letter published by EU domestic boss Thierry Breton asking him not to spread misinformation during an interview with the former president.
Mr. Trump responded by saying the EU was “bad” at trading with the US and criticised NATO for not spending enough on defence. Mr. Trump said:
That’s probably why they notified you. They don’t treat our country very well.
Musk asked Mr Trump about his views on the EU’s attempts to censor and impose censorship even on Americans from other countries.
The Republican candidate did not answer the question directly, starting to speculate about the US trade deficit with the EU. He added that, “they (the EU) enjoy a huge advantage over the United States on trade” and “they (the EU) are not as tough as China, but they are bad.”
Trump also touched on EU aid to Ukraine and compared it to US spending. He said:
I say, why aren’t you going to equalize? Why aren’t they paying what we’re paying? Why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe? That doesn’t make sense. That’s unfair, and that is an appropriate thing to address.
During the two-hour conversation, the Tesla boss and the Republican presidential candidate declared their mutual admiration and echoed shared political views on immigration and the economy.
Trump took the opportunity to lash out at President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, whom he blamed for the rise in illegal immigration. He also said:
She is a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco, and then as attorney-general, she destroyed California.
“She’s going to be worse than him,” he added, referencing President Joe Biden, saying the country needed to prevent anything happening under “stupid people like Biden”.
At the start of his speech at a campaign rally, Trump spoke about the assassination attempt on him last month, promising to return to the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, where a bullet struck him in the ear. He said:
The doctors later told me that the ear is a very bloody place if it’s hit. If I hadn’t turned my head, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now – no matter how much I like you.
Mr. Trump boasted of his good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while Mr. Musk questioned whether Ms. Harris was tough enough to stand up to foreign leaders. He said:
There are some very tough personalities out there. And if they don’t think the American president is tough, they’re going to do what they want to do.
Earlier, Mr. Trump’s X account posted a series of tweets for the first time in almost a year.
The Harris campaign responded to the interview with a statement saying the following:
Donald Trump’s extremism and his dangerous “Project 2025” programme is a feature, not a glitch in his campaign, which was on full display for those who were unlucky enough to listen today during everything on Channel X. Trump’s entire campaign serves people like Elon Musk and himself – narcissistic rich people who will sell out the middle class and fail to deliver live in 2024.
Donald Trump said President Biden is “close to vegetable stage.” He noted during the interview:
I looked at him today on the beach, and I said, Why would anybody allow him? The guy could barely walk. Why would anybody allow him?
The call, which Mr. Musk described as a “conversation” rather than an interview, started late: people entering the online space were first greeted by music or silence rather than a conversation between the two men. Mr. Musk blamed the attack on X’s system for impeding access, writing, “Looks like X is under massive DDoS attack. Working on disabling it.”
He appeared to blame the Democrats for the attack on X. When one X user wrote: “Democrats are fighting to “save” democracy from two powerful disrupters!”, Mr. Musk replied, “Yes.”
A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to disrupt a server or network by overwhelming it with a flood of Internet traffic.
