This photo combo shows former President Donald Trump, left, during a rally in Minden, Nevada, on Oct. 8, 2022, and Elon Musk in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 12, 2021. Matt Luke/AP Hide caption
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Matt Luke/AP
Former President Donald Trump and billionaire X-owner Elon Musk had a lot to say but very little to make news in a rambling interview Monday night that was plagued by lengthy technical delays.
Trump’s remarks largely followed the same contours as his rally speeches: He denounced illegal immigrants as a danger, boasted about his connections to leaders of U.S. adversaries such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and insulted his political opponents, particularly President Biden and Vice President Harris.
Musk peppered the conversation with mostly agreement with what Trump said, adding his own views on the root causes of inflation and concerns about air pollution, highlighting a paradoxical rapport between the two men, who often agree and then don’t quite get on the same page.
The conversation didn’t get off to a smooth start: When people tried to tune in, they saw a message on X saying that the Spaces audio feed was unavailable. It eventually started about 40 minutes later than scheduled. Musk blamed a cyberattack, but offered no evidence to back that up, and the rest of the website appeared to be working fine.
The glitch was reminiscent of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ failed campaign bid last year on X, then known as Twitter, which was plagued by technical issues and ended abruptly after 20 minutes. But Monday’s interview eventually resumed and peaked at 1.3 million listeners, according to X’s measurements.
Musk, a Trump supporter, began the interview seeming to acknowledge that his questions wouldn’t put any pressure on the former president. “Nobody gets to be their true self in an adversarial interview,” Musk said. “It’s hard to get a feel for someone when you don’t hear them speak normally.”

They spent the first 20 minutes discussing the July assassination attempt at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Musk’s support for Trump was clear.
Musk praised Trump for standing up and raising his fist after being shot, adding: “I think a lot of people admire your bravery in taking that shot.”
The two then moved on to topics on which they agree, including illegal immigration and the Biden administration’s view that it has failed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump returns to X, Musk embraces right-wing politics
Monday’s interview marked Trump’s first major reappearance on X since Musk bought the platform in late 2022 and reinstated his account.
Twitter suspended the former president’s account after his supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying his posts violated the company’s rules against glorifying violence. Since then, Trump has spent most of his time online posting to his social network, Truth Social.
After the Democratic Party moved to change its nominee from Harris to Biden, the former president has stepped up his online outreach efforts in an attempt to regain attention.
The conversation with Trump is the most visible example of Musk’s increasingly open embrace of right-wing politics. He supported Trump after the assassination attempt on the former president in July, but says he previously considered himself a “moderate Democrat.”

Musk’s associates have formed a super PAC to support Trump that is expected to funnel millions of dollars to his reelection campaign. Musk’s contributions to the group have not yet been disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, but people close to him say he is expected to financially support the campaign, and Trump has touted Musk’s financial backing during the election campaign. Meanwhile, the group’s data-collection practices in battleground states are the subject of an investigation by state prosecutors.
Musk’s control of X has transformed the go-to online platform for real-time news and information into a platform for major party candidates during the presidential election.
“There is no precedent for the owner of a social media platform to aggressively champion a particular candidate, especially when that person themselves is widely spreading misinformation and extremism,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth College.
Musk upended Twitter’s previous policy of political neutrality.
Before Musk’s acquisition, Twitter (now TwitterX) had sought to remain politically neutral since its founding in 2006. However imperfect those efforts may have been, Twitter executives tried to appear non-ideological, though not without controversy: accounts were suspended and posts were flagged, sparking accusations of political bias, especially from the right.
But now Musk has completely reset the platform’s norms: X’s feed is regularly flooded with posts from outspoken Trump surrogates demonizing Democrats and praising the former president, even for users who don’t follow those accounts.
Musk frequently uses his outsized presence on X to promote his own political views, frequently sharing memes, jokes and other posts from right-wing commentators about culture war issues. Blaming transgender rights, posting misleading claims about immigrants and breathless assessments of crime in America’s biggest cities are some of the topics Musk frequently covers, topics he shares with Trump.
He also posted a deepfake video of Ms Harris and defended it as a parody, even though it did not specify that it was fake, sparking debate among misinformation researchers.
Musk recently spoke out about anti-immigrant riots in the UK, writing that “civil war is inevitable,” a comment that drew condemnation from British government officials, who feared his posts could further inflame the ongoing violence in the country.
Such polarizing behavior appears to put Mr. Musk’s political activism at odds with his business goals, said Sarah T. Roberts, director of the Center for Critical Internet Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked as a researcher at Twitter in 2022 before Mr. Musk bought the company.
“What he does is designed to appeal to a certain demographic and people who think like him, and maybe that’s true, but it’s bound to alienate other people,” Roberts said. “So it’s a big gamble for anyone trying to create a popular product.”