It was about 45 minutes into the conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk — which was itself 42 minutes late starting — when the Republican nominee for U.S. president asked a rhetorical question: “Do you think Kamala could do this?”
If by “this” he meant ramble awkwardly while only occasionally being interrupted by a billionaire’s odd mumble of agreement, I am confident in saying that, yes, Kamala Harris could have managed the feat.
In one of the more surreal moments in a presidential election cycle that has included an incumbent stepping down and a failed assassination attempt, Trump made his return to X, the social-media platform Musk purchased when it was still known as Twitter, Monday night. It was billed as a “conversation” between the former president and the richest man alive, but from the start, it didn’t go as planned.
At first, the livestream, or “X Space,” didn’t work, leaving Trump-world celebrities incensed. ”@realDonaldTrump Please let Elon know we can’t join,” billionaire megadonor Bill Ackman tweeted at 8:13 p.m. “Not available????? I planned my whole day around this,” chimed in Glenn Beck.
Musk blamed the failure on a denial-of-service attack, an explanation that was at odds with the fact that the rest of the social-media site was functioning smoothly the whole time. An X source, meanwhile, told the Verge, ”there was a “99 percent” chance Elon was lying about an attack.”
Once the interview finally began, the audience was treated to a Trump whose speech was oddly slurred and lisping — trending topics on X during the event included “Daffy Duck” and “dentures” — and a Musk whose seemed content to let the Republican candidate say whatever he pleased without any pushback.
The pair went on at length about immigration, with Trump repeating a favourite attack line that the United States has been swamped in recent years by foreigners from “prisons, mental institutions, even insane asylums,” the latest instance in which Trump appeared not to understand that migrants seeking asylum in the United States were not literally escaping asylums. He also repeated his theory that countries from all over the world were emptying their institutions and sending their occupants to America at great cost, ignoring the logistics of how that might happen. “These are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people,” Trump said. “Yeah,” Musk replied.
But Trump also displayed his tendency to veer from topic to topic, even in the friendliest of environments. He began to criticize Harris over the border, then immediately tacked to a complaint about her copying his plan to eliminate a tax on service-industry tips. “Right,” Musk added.
At one point, Trump touted his great relationship with Vladimir Putin. He insisted he had warned the Russian president against invading Ukraine. He told him he would cut him off completely if that happened.
“He said, ‘No way,’” Trump said of Putin. “And I said, “Way.’” The reference to Wayne’s World, the 1992 film starring Scarborough’s Mike Myers was, if nothing else, unexpected.
At other times, Trump lamented the extreme cost of bacon, described a new Time magazine cover of Harris as “beautiful” before saying she looked like his wife, Melania, and discussed the time he had a nice dinner with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.
If he had a message Monday night, he definitely didn’t stay on it.
The conversation came amid a frenetic few weeks for Trump. His once-comfortable lead in the polls has evaporated now that Joe Biden is out of the race. Most pollsters now consider the contest either a toss-up or see it leaning toward Harris.
The former president has responded the only way he knows how, by lashing out.
He told a roomful of Black journalists that Harris, born to a Black father and an Indian mother, had only recently “turned” Black. He held a rambling and incoherent press conference at his home in Mar-a-Lago. NPR counted “at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes” during the event.
He has appeared particularly aggrieved by the large crowds turning out for Harris rallies, posting a rant to his Truth Social platform in which he accused the vice-president of using a fake, A.I.-generated image of a crowd in Detroit, despite the event being covered by journalists who produced dozens of images of the audience. (As did attendees with their phones.) “THEY DIDN’T EXIST,” Trump wrote of the people who existed.
It must be said, though, that once that Trump got going Monday, he sounded like he was having a ball. And why wouldn’t he? At every turn, Musk was happy to repeat Trump talking points and bash Harris.
Near the end, more than two and a half hours after it was supposed to start, Trump said he was excited by the number of listeners.
“Do I get paid for this, or not,” Trump said, rhetorical again.
But in fact, the money should have been going the other way.
The X Space finally ended just before 11 p.m. The campaign, on the other hand, won’t end for another 85 days.
