In a historic first, President Donald Trump sat down and spoke with billionaire inventor Elon Musk—his companies include SpaceX, Tesla, and X, formerly known as Twitter—on the social media platform X which Musk owns.
The two chatted for nearly two hours on a variety of topics, and according to Musk, the first-ever long-form presidential candidate interview on social media has already had more than 1 billion views. That’s right, billion with a b. Mainstream media cannot even dream of reaching a fraction of that many people.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the fall race, was among the topics of conversation. Since parachuting into the seat vacated by President Biden when he unexpectedly dropped out of the race in July, Harris has avoided media interviews. Indeed, her own campaign page does not even include a policy platform.
Trump said it was “pretty sad” that someone like Harris won’t answer questions or sit down for a “friendly interview.” The Harris campaign brushed off Elon Musk’s invitation to replicate the Trump conversation with Harris.
And why shouldn’t she? Harris seems to have charmed all the major media, and they’re not asking many questions, strangely. Time Magazine’s cover this week has a portrait of Harris that looks almost like religious iconography, or an attempt to make her appear to be a civil rights leader in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The August 13 conversation between Trump and Musk got off to a very rough start for the first several minutes due to a “distributed denial-of-service” attack. That is when a person or group of people disrupt a website by getting multiple different devices and computers to virtually “log on,” jamming up the signal. It is analogous to the old busy signal callers would get when trying to reach someone whose line was in use.
The two discussed a wide range of issues, including the assassination attempt on Trump, the crisis of illegal immigration, out of control inflation, and more. It was a casual talk that almost seemed like two friends pontificating over drinks.
Trump makes no bones about his desire to slim down the federal government massively, and he wants to start by abolishing the Department of Education, a position that sends Democrats into a frenzy. Most Americans have probably forgotten that the DOE never existed before President Jimmy Carter created it in the 1970s.
