Following their live-streamed conversation on X, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign staff is criticizing Donald Trump and Elon Musk, asserting that the Republican candidate’s goals are for “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class.”
After purchasing Twitter in 2022 and rebranding it as X, Musk spoke with former President Trump on the platform on Monday. The interview was beset by technical issues and began awkwardly after more than 40 minutes of waiting. Trump covered a wide range of his main talking points, including trade, immigration, censorship, and the assassination attempt on his life.
Between disparaging remarks about the Democratic presidential candidate, like calling Harris “incompetent” and her campaign “a hoax,” Trump oddly referred to Harris as “beautiful” and compared her to his wife Melania on the cover of Time magazine. In addition, he lauded Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin for being at the “top of their game.” The interview was shared on Trump’s X account, and as of Tuesday morning, when this story was published, more than 165 million people had viewed it.
Following the interview, Joseph Costello, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, is now responding on behalf of the Vice President, claiming that Trump’s radicalism and “dangerous Project 2025 agenda” is a feature, not a glitch of his campaign, “which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com.”
“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,” he added.
The latest cover story from The Hollywood Reporter is on the liberal moguls in Los Angeles who are challenging Musk and the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club in this election. Hollywood’s new battle cry is “Fuck these Trump-loving techies,” as one studio executive put it, during the conflict over who each side wants in the White House this November.
Musk is supporting Trump in this election. The owner of Space X had promised to provide Trump’s campaign $45 million every month, but he then recanted his statement. He is now saying that he is directing his funds into AmericaPAC, his own pro-Trump political action organization, and he is not the only one making payments for Trump 2024.
Musk received considerable criticism from the European Union prior to the interview. In an open letter published on Monday, Thierry Breton, the Frenchman serving as the EU’s internal market commissioner, requested that the tech tycoon and founder of X remove his interview with Trump in order to prevent “the amplification of damaging information.” According to Breton, Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022, is required by law to abide by the Digital Services Act (DSA) and stop the dissemination of false material. The CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, was copied.
“As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU,” Breton continued in his letter. Any “negative effect of illegal content” could lead the EU to take further action against X and Musk, using “our full toolbox, including by adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from harm.”
A meme that read, “Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!” was Musk’s response to Breton’s message.
After his account was suspended due to the Capitol rioting on January 6, 2021, Trump went back to the app. “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said at the time. When Musk took over, though, he reinstated Trump’s account.
