Fifteen months after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign during an X Spaces event hampered by that there wasn’t any such attack, with another staffer telling the publication that there was a “99 percent” chance Musk had lied.
Whatever the reason for the technical difficulties and preparation done to avoid them, the issue was still fodder for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, which hasn’t shied away from confronting Trump in non-policy related areas like crowd sizes and “energy” levels. This time, it used his own words against him.
On Truth Social, Trump’s social media site, the campaign’s account reposted Trump’s disparaging response to DeSantis’ rocky campaign launch last May—with the implication clear.
“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” Trump wrote then.
Truth Social
The chat was finally launched 40 minutes later, with Musk apologizing for “the late start.” He blamed a DDOS attack, which “saturated all of our data lines—hundreds of gigabytes of data was saturated.”
Trump—who seemed to be speaking with a lisp—then spun the issue by congratulating Musk for “breaking every record in the book tonight.” It’s unclear what sort of records he was referring to.
When questioned by The Daily Beast about the apparent lisp, a Trump spokesperson responded: “Must be your hearing.”
Musk prefaced the chat by saying he was “honored” by the ability to have it, and sought to distinguish it from an interview.
“I want to emphasize it is a conversation. It’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is like in a conversation,” he said. “It’s hard to catch a vibe about someone if you don’t hear them talk in a normal way, and when there is an adversarial interview, no one is themselves…and this is really aimed at open-minded, independent voters who are just trying to make up their mind.”
The pair’s conversation Monday occurred a few weeks after Musk endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign on the day of the former president’s attempted assassination. Shortly thereafter, Musk had reportedly agreed to give a pro-Trump political action committee $45 million per month until the election, but a week later said he would not be doing so. His endorsement still stands.
Accordingly, the chat was on wholly comfortable ground for Trump—a far cry from his racist outburst while facing probing questions during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last month.
Trump hit many of the same points as his stump speeches and interviews with conservative media outlets. He defended his kind words for foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, dismissed the threat of global warming, and reiterated his desire to shut down the Department of Education.
He also criticized not only Harris, but President Joe Biden, despite him no longer running for reelection. The president, he said, is “close to vegetable stage,” adding: “It looks so bad, and it’s ridiculous. He can’t lift a chair… the chair weighs about three ounces… The whole thing is crazy. We don’t have a president.”
