US election live: Donald Trump to join Elon Musk on X for virtual interview
Good evening, US politics blog readers, and thanks for joining us as we cover Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk, the Tesla boss who has lately put his massive wealth to work in support of Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Their interview is scheduled for 8pm ET on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter which Musk bought two years ago, and has since turned into a haven for rightwing misinformation.
We’ll tell you more about Trump’s long relationship with X, but first let’s talk about the moment in which this interview is taking place. We’re less than three months out from the 5 November presidential election, and the Trump campaign has been thrown for a loop by Joe Biden’s decision not to seek a second term, and hand the reins to his vice-president Kamala Harris. Polls of voters taken since the Democrat stepped aside in late July have shown Harris pulling ahead of Trump both nationally and in several crucial swing states, and the former president has appeared unsure of just how to regain the momentum that he seemed to have when Biden was the Democratic standard-bearer.
This evening’s interview will offer Trump the opportunity to do that in an arena he knows well. During his successful campaign in 2016 and almost the entirety of his presidency, Trump used X to do everything from condemning his rivals to announcing policies, until the company’s leaders banned him in the wake of the January 6 attack. Musk reinstated Trump’s account after he bought the platform, but the former president posted only once – until today, when he made eight posts, most of which are campaign videos. We’ll see if he continues to make use of X in the weeks to come.
Here’s what else we will be watching out for:
Will Musk make any promises to Trump? He’s the world’s richest man, and his money could help the ex-president close the messaging gap with Harris, who has been raking it in ever since she replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
What will Trump say about Harris? Some of the former president’s attacks against the vice-president seem to have backfired, such as when he implied that she was not actually Black.
Will Musk push back on any of Trump’s falsehoods? The former president has a tendency to lie, distort and exaggerate, and often clashes with interviewers who challenge him on his facts. We’ll see if Musk follows suit, or lets him talk.