Donald Trump triumphantly returned to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday for a two-hour live conversation with billionaire Elon Musk. The conversation was heard by millions worldwide, despite attempts from left-wing journalists, the European Union, and hackers to thwart it.
On Monday afternoon, Trump fired off his first post on X since being banned from the platform after the January 6 riot back in 2021, quizzing the public: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!”
Musk and Trump’s discussion was scheduled to begin at 8PM EST but was delayed by 40 minutes due to a denial of service (DDOS) attack directed at X, clearly intended to disrupt the event. A DDOS attack is when hackers flood a site’s server with traffic to overwhelm its resources. In this case, the Kamala campaign appeared to cheer on the hackers.
Once the attack was foiled, the two men began their nearly two-hour conversation, which spanned a wide range of topics, from illegal immigration, the assassination attempt on his life, inflation, and more. A few news-worthy quotes:
🐔 Kamala not taking questions: “It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview.”
🚸 Addressing Kamala’s tough border talk: “She had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent, and he’s incompetent.”
🔄 Kamala’s coup on Joe: “This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way.'”
🎒 On education: “I want to close up [the DOE], move education back to the states. … Of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great.”
🖼️ Big picture Trump: “This is so much more important than me or my life. We gotta save this country.”
🗳️ Elon’s message to voters: “Historically, I was a moderate Democrat. But now I feel like we’re at a critical juncture for the country…For the people out there in the moderate camp, I think you should support Donald Trump for president.”
The numbers: At the time of publication, the conversation was seen by over 200 million people, with around 25 million listening in.
According to X, between 7:47 and 10:47 PM ET, there were more than four million posts about it, generating a billion views.
In the lead-up to the interview, the European Union issued a letter to Musk threatening to use a newly enacted law regulating speech on social media in the EU if his conversation with Trump contains “potentially harmful content.”
During yesterday’s White House press briefing, a journalist recommended that the White House censor the conversation: “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue; it’s an America issue. What role does [the Biden-Harris regime] have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or intervening in that?”
The last word goes to Greg Gutfeld, Fox News host, who wrote on X: “This interview is good. But the bigger story is that two of the most important world figures agree on the world. What [does] that tell you? The most consequential technical genius perhaps ever and the most consequential political figure are talking about stuff on equal footing, and Trump knows everything Musk is talking about concerning energy, artificial intelligence, and economic development. no politician could energetically engage on future problems like this. Most would need a staff of ten doing packets of research for each topic and still the politician will have no idea what to think.”
LISTEN:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024
This article was adapted from the Wake Up Right newsletter, a free daily newsletter for conservatives, which you can sign up for here.
