Dem
51
GOP
49
Yesterday, Donald Trump had a much-hyped "live" streaming interview on eX-Twitter with Elon Musk. If you want to listen to it (it's almost 2 hours long), you can do so here. It did not go particularly well for either man.
Let's start with Musk, for whom there were two problems. The first is that, once again, a high-profile event on his platform was extremely glitchy. Recall that Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) eX-Twitter-hosted campaign launch was a disaster, which proved to be a pretty clear omen, as it turns out. The Trump interview started 45 minutes late because viewers could not get, and stay, connected. Musk claimed that his platform was the victim of a "massive [Distributed Denial of Service] attack." However, this is unlikely. Such an attack would affect the whole platform, as opposed to just one "space." Further, current employees of eX-Twitter told the media that it's a 99% chance that claim is a lie.
The other issue for Musk is that he didn't really get to have a "conversation" with Trump. For much of the event, Trump talked over or ignored Musk. Presumably, the Tesla tycoon was hoping to have some influence over Trump or over his devoted followers. That likely did not happen.
As to Trump, he wasn't terrible, in that he didn't say anything too bizarre, he didn't ramble too much, and he didn't slip up and say something offensive. For a portion of the interview, he even talked about policy, particularly his ideas about the economy. However, on the whole, it was basically a repeat of his stump speech and of his RNC address, which are pretty much the same thing.
These things being the case, it's hard to see how Trump helped himself with the appearance. It is difficult to know exactly how many people tuned in, and you certainly shouldn't trust any claims from Musk or Trump. What is certain is that the maximum number of viewers at one time was 1 million; over the course of the 2 hours, the total viewership was probably two or three times that. Since most of those people are going to be True Believers, and since Trump didn't say anything new or notable, it was pretty much a textbook example of preaching to the choir. He also got mocked by the Kamala Harris campaign, which live-Tweeted the event, concluding with this:
Donald Trump's extremism 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.
Trump is not going to be happy when he sees that.
Meanwhile, yesterday's events definitely hit Trump where it really hurts. He logged on to his eX-Twitter account yesterday, for the first time in a year, and he posted a handful of short messages promoting the interview and his various websites. Right around the same time, his own social media platform was reporting that it lost $16.4 million in the most recent fiscal quarter. Between these two things (which hint at the possibility that Trump might return to eX-Twitter on a permanent basis), the price of Trump Media & Technology Group dropped to $24.88 a share yesterday. Only one time since the company went public has the share price been that low; that was back in April. Since that time, the total value of Trump's stake has dropped by over $1 billion.
Trump's advisors, for their part, are surely worried about something else. At very least, Trump's return to eX-Twitter is more evidence that he's getting very anxious about the campaign. At most, he could make his return to eX-Twitter permanent, which would mean his wildest and craziest thoughts would reach a much, much larger audience. That makes it rather more difficult to keep him from shooting himself in the foot.
However, then no one has to look at his own boutique social media site to read his brilliant thoughts. That will make the DJT stock collapse even faster than it is now. As a result he will have to choose between his campaign and his net worth. Tough call.
We will see if Musk and Trump make this a regular occurrence. Based on how this one went, they would probably be best off leaving well enough alone. (Z)