By Emmanuel Ogbodo<\/p>\n
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participated in a two-hour interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Musk’s social media platform X. The event was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical issues but eventually drew as many as 1.3 million listeners.<\/p>\n
Musk, who has endorsed Trump, claimed the delay was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelms a server or network with traffic to shut it down. However, this claim could not be verified. Trump turned the situation into a positive, congratulating Musk on the high number of people trying to tune in.<\/p>\n
Before the event, Musk wrote, “I\u2019m going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.” X did not provide further details or evidence of the alleged cyberattack.<\/p>\n
During the interview, the two men frequently exchanged praise. The Tesla chief commended Trump for his bravery during a recent assassination attempt, while Trump lauded Musk’s decisiveness in handling labour disputes, saying, “You’re the greatest cutter…I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike. And you say: ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone.'”<\/p>\n
Musk, who previously supported Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020, shifted his political stance after the assassination attempt on Trump, declaring his support for the former president despite Trump’s opposition to state support for electric carmakers like Tesla. As the interview concluded, Musk told Trump, “I think we’re at a fork in the road of destiny, of civilization, and I think we need to take the right path, and I think you’re the right path.”<\/p>\n
The interview provided Trump with an unfiltered opportunity to air his grievances, personal attacks, and controversial claims. Musk allowed Trump to lead the conversation without challenging his inaccurate statements, such as the claim that other countries were sending criminals from their prisons across the southern U.S. border or that bacon prices had risen four or five times.<\/p>\n
Studies indicate that immigrants, including those in the U.S. illegally, do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.<\/p>\n
This interview was part of Trump’s ongoing efforts to shift attention away from his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose recent entry into the presidential race has energised her party and boosted fundraising efforts. Trump took the opportunity to insult Harris, calling her “third rate,” “incompetent,” and “a radical left lunatic.” However, he also complimented her appearance, saying, “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” referring to a picture of Harris on the cover of Time magazine. He added, “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania,” referencing his wife Melania Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump also expressed frustration that Harris had replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket, claiming, “She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started,” and falsely labelling Biden’s removal as a “coup.”<\/p>\n
Despite leading Biden in many battleground state polls, Trump is now trailing Harris in some of these critical states.<\/p>\n
Trump, who was previously critical of electric vehicles, has changed his stance since Musk’s endorsement, describing Tesla’s electric cars as “incredible.”<\/p>\n
During the conversation, Trump also praised authoritarian leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling them “at the top of their game.”<\/p>\n
Trump returned to X on Monday, posting for the first time in a year after his account, @realDonaldTrump, was reinstated by Musk a month into his ownership of the platform. The account had been suspended by X’s previous owners following the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, due to concerns that Trump might incite further violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Emmanuel Ogbodo Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participated in a two-hour interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Musk’s social media platform X. The event was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical issues but eventually drew as many as 1.3 million listeners. Musk, who has endorsed Trump, claimed the delay was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43074,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43073\/revisions\/43074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}