Rambling Trump, Musk interview marred by tech issues

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By Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sat Monday for a friendly two-hour interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Musk’s social media platform X, after technical problems delayed the start of the event for more than 40 minutes.

Musk, who has endorsed Trump, blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, though his claim could not be verified.

Trump sought to turn the problems into a positive, congratulating Musk on the number of people trying to tune in. A counter on X showed as many as 1.3 million people were listening at times during the lengthy conversation.

The technical issues recalled a similar event on X in May 2023, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suffered a chaotic start to his bid for the Republican presidential nomination due to glitches on the platform.

At the time, Trump mocked DeSantis on his own, social media platform, Truth Social. “My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!)” Trump posted, “Yours does not.”

Ahead of Monday’s event, Musk had written: “Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.” X did not respond to requests for details or evidence of the alleged cyberattack.

The two men exchanged praise repeatedly, with the Tesla chief lauding Trump for his bravery during the attempt on his life last month, and Trump congratulating Musk for his willingness to fire workers demanding better conditions.

“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said. “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.'”

Musk, the world’s richest person, announced his support for Trump shortly after his attempted assassination, despite the Republican’s opposition to state support for electric carmakers like Tesla. Musk backed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has tacked rightward since.

“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,” he told Trump as the interview concluded.

The chat with Musk offered Trump an unfiltered chance to air his usual mix of grievances, personal attacks and overstated or false claims.

Musk let Trump lead the conversation and did not challenge Trump’s inaccurate statements, like the assertion 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.

Studies show immigrants, including those in the U.S. illegally, do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.

The talk was Trump’s latest effort to seize the spotlight from his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose 11th-hour entry into the race has galvanized her party and boosted Democratic fundraising.

Harris has dominated headlines with a series of high-energy rallies since she replaced Biden as the party’s candidate three weeks ago. Her momentum could get another boost from the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.

In a statement after the interview, a Harris campaign spokesperson, Joseph Costello, said: “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

The former president sounded at several points as if he had a lisp, something many listeners noted on X. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.

HARRIS MOMENTUM

Trump insulted Harris several times, referring to her as “third rate”, “incompetent” and “a radical left lunatic.”

But then he praised her looks.

“She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” Trump said about a picture of Harris on the cover of Time magazine. “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania,” he added, referring to his wife Melania Trump.

He also expressed anger that Harris had been swapped in for Biden on the Democratic ticket.

“She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started,” Trump said, claiming falsely that Biden dropping off the ticket was a “coup.”

Trump had been leading Biden in many polls of battleground states likely to be critical to the outcome of the Nov. 5 election, but is now trailing Harris in some of the same states.

A longstanding critic of electric vehicles, Trump has shifted gears since Musk’s endorsement. On Monday, he described the electric cars made by Tesla as “incredible.”

He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – all authoritarian strongmen – as at the “top of their game.”

TRUMP BACK ON X

Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, with a series of posts on Monday for the first time in a year, reviving an account that had served as a main method of communication in previous campaigns and his four years in the White House, including his followers’ Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Musk’s ownership of X after being suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the Jan. 6 attack, citing concerns he would incite violence.

Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social platform, which was launched in February 2022, but his posts there reach a much smaller audience than on X.

Musk, who has echoed Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and Biden’s immigration policies, started an external super PAC spending group to support Trump’s campaign. The political action committee is now under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of state laws on gathering voter information.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer, Kanishka Singh, Abhirup Roy, Eric Beech and Nathan Layne; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Alistair Bell, Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)