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Musk Tees Up Softball Questions for Trump on X, After Technical Problems

Elon Musk offered frequent praise as he proved a sympathetic partner to help amplify Donald J. Trump’s views on a social-media platform that once barred him for pushing his false election claims.

By Michael Gold

What was supposed to be Donald J. Trump’s triumphant return to a social-media platform central to his presidency was marred by glitches on Monday night, when a livestreamed conversation on X between Mr. Trump and its owner, Elon Musk, was significantly delayed by technical issues.

But once their chat began, 40 minutes after it was scheduled, Mr. Musk’s and Mr. Trump’s newly developed camaraderie was on clear display, with the billionaire tech entrepreneur lobbing softball questions that allowed Mr. Trump to rattle off the talking points that have animated his presidential campaign.

The conversation offered little new information about Mr. Trump’s views. Over the course of more than two hours, Mr. Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, as a “phony” who, along with President Biden, failed to address crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico. He repeated a number of false claims, including that the 2020 election was rigged, the criminal cases against him were a conspiracy by the Biden administration to undermine his candidacy and the leaders of other nations were deliberately sending criminals and “their nonproductive people” to America.

To all of these points, Mr. Musk largely voiced his agreement, offering frequent praise as he proved a sympathetic partner to help amplify Mr. Trump’s views on a social-media platform that once barred him for promoting false claims that promoted political violence. Mr. Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X last year.

“I’ve not been very political before,” Mr. Musk said toward the end of their chat, describing himself as “moderate, if not moderate, slightly left,” and adding that listeners who categorized themselves that way should back Mr. Trump.

Early in the evening, Mr. Musk — who shares with Mr. Trump a contempt for the mainstream media — was clear that he was not conducting an “adversarial” interview but wanted to help “open-minded, independent voters” simply “catch a vibe.”

“I want to emphasize it’s a conversation, and it’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation,” Mr. Musk said.

Whether that gambit will help Mr. Trump win over undecided voters or Mr. Musk restore confidence in his platform remains unclear. The faulty beginning, which Mr. Musk attributed to a cyberattack, threatened to overshadow the conversation itself. And the technical errors recalled similar issues that plagued another political event hosted by Mr. Musk last year, when Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign announcement on Twitter was rife with glitches, hot mics and dead air.

Monday’s conversation — held on Spaces, X’s audio livestreaming platform — followed a series of efforts by Mr. Trump and his team to recapture the momentum he has lost since Mr. Biden ended his re-election bid and Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked Ms. Harris for not holding a formal news conference and avoiding interviews with journalists. He has played up his willingness to take questions as he tries to take back the political spotlight. At several points, he framed his conversation with Mr. Musk as part of that line of attack.

Last month, Mr. Trump was combative while being interviewed by a panel of Black female journalists at a National Association of Black Journalists convention, where he questioned Ms. Harris’s racial identity. Last week, he grew frustrated by questioning at a hastily scheduled news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., where his answers often meandered and a story he told about a helicopter ride drew significant scrutiny.

By contrast, the conversation with Mr. Musk brought Mr. Trump a social-media vehicle to extend his appeal beyond the right-wing talk radio shows or conservative television outlets where Mr. Trump is often given space to share his views by fawning hosts who rarely interrupt or check facts. According to X, more than a million listeners were tuned in to the conversation.

And the conversation allowed Mr. Musk to air many of his own grievances, including his criticisms of government regulation that he said hampered innovation. Mr. Musk has frequently criticized Mr. Biden in his X posts, and he enthusiastically backed Mr. Trump’s depiction of the president as weak and incompetent and of Ms. Harris as unfit to lead.

“You can actually have a conversation with you,” Mr. Musk said after an hour in which Mr. Trump had done most of the talking. “And you can’t have a conversation with Biden or Kamala. It’s not possible.”

A Harris campaign spokesman, Joseph Costello, mocked X’s technical issues and criticized the pair’s views. “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,” Mr. Costello said in a statement.

Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Musk capped a remarkable reversal in what had been an icy relationship. Mr. Musk had been critical of Mr. Trump for years but underwent a political transformation as he grew angry with Democrats over transgender rights, immigration and the Biden administration’s treatment of Tesla.

Mr. Musk endorsed Mr. Trump shortly after the former president survived an assassination attempt last month, and he co-founded a super PAC that is looking to spend large sums in order to build a new ground game for Republicans that could aid the Trump campaign’s efforts.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has softened his yearslong diatribes against electric vehicles, increasingly telling crowds at his rallies that he likes them — and particularly those produced by Mr. Musk’s company — even as he knocks them for supposed shortcomings.

And on Monday, he returned to Mr. Musk's website after years of relative silence there, posting eight times before their conversation. His posts largely consisted of campaign videos he and his team have already distributed, including a video that traces his political rise and another attacking Ms. Harris as overly liberal.

Mr. Trump was banned from X, then called Twitter, in 2021 after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Twitter decided that Mr. Trump’s posts encouraged violence.

Mr. Musk reinstated Mr. Trump’s account after he bought the platform in 2022, but Mr. Trump largely eschewed it in favor of his own social media platform, Truth Social. The lone exceptions came in August 2023, when Mr. Trump posted a link to his campaign website and a photo of the mug shot taken after he was booked at a jail in Georgia on racketeering charges and gave an interview to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, who streams his talk shows on X.

Kate Conger, Ryan Mac and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.