Former President Donald Trump’s chat with Elon Musk on X on Monday night began nearly an hour late as the social media platform struggled with technical difficulties before the two logged on for a conversation that focused on illegal border crossings, the pandemic and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
For about 40 minutes, listeners who were able to access X Spaces were greeted with hold music, with Musk eventually stating on X that the site appeared to be facing “a massive DDOS attack,” or distributed denial of service.
Finally, around a quarter to 9 p.m. ET, Musk got the conversation started, praising the former president for his handling of the assassination attempt on his life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, mentioning Trump shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as the Secret Service ushered him off stage.
“When I stood up to the hand, to the raised fist, they didn’t know if I was alive. Nobody knew. And when I raised my fist, they were just relieved and happy and elated, and the place went crazy,” Trump told Musk as the two discussed the incident for more than 20 minutes.
Throughout the conversation, Trump returned to familiar talking points, including praising authoritarian leaders, criticizing and insulting President Joe Biden and denigrating immigrants.
During their discussion, one area of contention between the two men came up: climate change, although Musk has called it “global warming.” Musk has repeatedly advocated for renewable energy, while Trump has continually defended fossil fuels, saying he is more concerned about “nuclear warming.”
“I’ve heard about fossil fuels, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity for the electric car, you know, fossil fuels are what actually create that, in the power plants,” Trump said after Musk spoke about the possibility of the air being uncomfortable to breathe in the future.
Elon Musk hit back at Trump by telling him that he was not saying that “the house is burning down immediately,” but that “it’s probably better to go faster than slower… without vilifying the oil and gas industry and causing short-term pain.”
However, as he discussed global threats, Trump joked that there would be “more beachfront properties” due to rising sea levels and global warming.
“You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean level is going to rise an eighth of an inch over the next 400 years, and you’re going to have more beachfront properties, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power,” Trump said.
Both men lambasted Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who Trump criticized over the border, without mentioning that he had asked House Republicans to kill the recent comprehensive immigration bill that Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford helped draft.
“She says she was strong at the border. ‘We’re going to be strong.’ Well, she doesn’t have to say it. [it]”She could shut it down right now. … They could do things right now. It’s horrible,” Trump said.
During the conversation with X, Trump once again claimed – without evidence – that President Biden’s exit from the race was a “coup.”
Trump continued to rail against Harris throughout his speech, pointing to her new TIME magazine cover, saying she looked like his wife, Melania Trump. He also argued that the vice president had gotten a media makeover.
“She’s terrible. She’s terrible, but she gets special treatment. I saw a picture of her in TIME magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress who ever lived. It was a drawing and she looked a lot like our great first lady, Melania… She didn’t look like Kamala,” Trump said, mispronouncing the vice president’s name.
Concluding just after Trump congratulated Musk on the size of their Spaces chat audience, which appeared to reach around 1.3 million at its peak, Musk reaffirmed his support for Trump.
“I think we’re in a very difficult situation with the Kamala administration, and that’s my honest opinion,” Musk said. “I think it’s really critical that you win this election for the good of the country.”
Responding to the conversation, a Harris campaign spokesperson called the couple “rich self-centered people.”
“Donald Trump’s extremism and his dangerous Project 2025 agenda are a feature, not a flaw, of his campaign, which was on full display for those unfortunate enough to tune in tonight during what was happening on X.com. The entire Trump campaign is in service of people like himself and Elon Musk – self-obsessed rich people who will betray the middle class and who won’t be able to host a livestream in 2024,” a Harris campaign representative said in a statement.
The campaign also mocked the 40-minute-plus wait for the interview to begin by re-sharing on Kamala HQ’s Truth Social account a previous post from Trump on Truth Social that criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch event on X last year, which was also delayed by technical issues.
“Wow! DeSanctus’ Twitter launch is a DISASTER! His entire campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
Last May, DeSantis had planned to launch his campaign with Musk in audio only, but repeated glitches and crashes stalled the start of the Spaces event for nearly 30 minutes, after alternating periods of silence and audio crackling.
At one point, Spaces abruptly shut down and then restarted, as Musk and others could apparently be heard discussing the malfunctions behind the scenes.
Musk suggested during DeSantis’ presidential campaign show that the problems were due to pressure on the platform’s servers and “scaling issues” because his own account was involved and had 140 million users.
