Talk about “weird”. First, Elon Musk boldly promised that his conversation with Donald Trump was about to begin live on X. Fifteen minutes later, the sound of silence was deafening. Trump and Musk fans began panicking. Can you hear anything, they tweeted nervously? Nope, me neither. Musk eventually popped up online to say he had tested his gear with “eight million concurrent listeners”. But the system was obviously crashing. Musk went on to blame a cyber attack. His opponents responded gleefully “LMAO” — “laughing my ass off” in internet speak.
X, the site formerly known as Twitter, last night stuck up two fingers at its terminally online owner. How satisfying that all those billions couldn’t buy the richest man in the world a social media platform that works when he wants it to. Meanwhile, Trump’s Truth Media, which owns Truth Social, a carbon copy of Twitter, has been dropping in value because of his promise to join Musk’s platform. It recently posted a loss of $16 million. I would have loved to be a fly-on-the-wall at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last night as X went on the blink. The Republican presidential candidate’s aides will have been on the receiving end of a volley of furious expletives.
Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris is having all the luck. While Trump and Musk fumed impotently at the silent screen last night, memes appeared of her dancing merrily in front of the blank purple space on X. The humiliation of the two biggest egos on the planet was complete.
Before the X debacle, Trump was already gibbering that Harris was using AI to fake the size of her crowds. This was nonsense of course. I was in Philadelphia last week to watch her introduce Tim Walz as her White House running mate in front of 10,000 people and the excitement level was through the roof.
Trump commended Kamala Harris for looking beautiful, like his wife Melania, on the cover of Time magazine
Truly Trump and Musk deserve each other. Only a year ago, the tech billionaire was a big fan of the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and tweeted that Trump would be 82 at the end of his second term in office, “too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone president of the United States”. To drive home the age gap, DeSantis foolishly decided to prove he was down with the kids by launching his presidential campaign with a Musk interview on X that kept glitching and was full of static.
At the time, it was Trump who was laughing his ass off. “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” he mocked. Sure enough, DeSantis never recovered his footing. Thanks to Musk’s preening ambition and, I dare say, his promise to donate up to $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign, the former president fell into the same Twitter trap as his Republican rival. It’s “DeKarma”, a DeSantis aide smirked last night.
Eventually, the Donald and Elon show got under way to an audience of just over one million. More than 50 million watched Trump debate with Biden on television on June 28. This seems light years ago now. I gather the billionaires began by talking about the assassination attempt on Trump, but the first thing I heard was Musk rattling on about energy policy. The attention-seeking Trump barely managed to get a word in edgeways but occasionally laughed along sycophantically. When he finally broke through, Trump praised Musk fulsomely and told him he would be the first genius to stick solar panels on cars. The puzzled Tesla owner remained prudently silent.
After that, Trump began ranting about nuclear threats (which he later claimed only he could solve because he got on so well with the pot-bellied North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un). No, Musk corrected him. Fukushima, the site of an appalling nuclear accident in 2011, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were devastated by atomic bombs in 1945, were thriving cities again, so we had nothing to worry about. At least I think that’s what Musk was saying. It took me a while to follow the discussion. “I’m pretty sure Elon and Donald are standing next to each other at a urinal having this conversation,” quipped a Democratic strategist. Not being a guy, I wouldn’t know, but they weren’t addressing me. Piers Morgan (with his army of 8.8 million followers) praised Trump and Musk for having a “surprisingly fascinating” chat about trains. This elicited a response from the alleged rapist, Andrew Tate (9.8 million followers), who said it was “concerning” that not everyone agreed with Trump on immigration. “Brutal common sense,” Tate posted.
Their disconnected dialogue mirrored the bewildering zig and zag of Trump and Musk’s actual conversation. But perhaps I’m the odd one out. The brotherhood seems to like this kind of talk. “Tampons in boys’ bathrooms!” Trump barked about the genial Walz, Democratic nominee for vice-president. “That’s all I have to hear.” He then went on to commend Harris for looking beautiful, like his wife Melania, on the cover of Time magazine. If only she wasn’t a crazy San Francisco liberal!
The more I listened, the more I sensed something was off. Trump was slurring, as if his teeth didn’t fit. Had he bought a new set of choppers? Is this why he was absent from the campaign trail for days? I wasn’t the only one to notice. The word “dentures” began trending on X, although it may simply be a case of new veneers. The funniest thing is that both Trump and Musk were determined to have the last word, so they kept on talking until some poor sod finally pulled the plug.
“It’s an honour to be on your show,” Trump said several times in conclusion. Declining the hint, Musk kept on making further points until Trump — urged by aides whispering in his ear, no doubt — would try to wrap up again with a bullet point or two about Harris being such a radical Left lunatic that if she wins “I don’t think our country can survive”.
Both were determined to have the last word, so they kept on talking until some poor sod finally pulled the plug
Musk naturally agreed with this verdict. He claimed that he had always been quite liberal (“I queued for six hours to shake Obama’s hand”). But he told Trump: “I think we’re in massive trouble with a Kamala administration… I think it’s essential you win for the good of the country.”
Surely it was past the former president’s bedtime? “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Trump asked, desperately making his final pitch to listeners. But Musk hadn’t quite finished. There are some grand projects we could do, he suggested. “We could build a base on the moon. We could send astronauts to Mars.”
“Right,” Trump nodded weakly, praising Musk again. But I bet he was thinking, this guy can’t even make X work.
