Billionaire Elon Musk is set to host a live conversation with former President Donald Trump on Musk’s social media platform.
“This is unscripted with no limits on the subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!” Musk said.
The interview is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. MT on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In anticipation of this interview, Trump returned to X and posted three campaign videos highlighting his vision for the United States and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s last post before his return was his mugshot from Aug. 24, 2023, the day he voluntarily surrendered himself to authorities at the county jail in Atlanta. Aside from television appearances on Fox News, he prefers to use his propriety platform Truth Social after his account was canceled following the Jan. 6 riots.
Musk and Trump will be drawing new audiences online at a time when Harris is building momentum months before the 2024 presidential election, as seen in national and swing state polls.
Elon Musk’s X a hot spot for 2024 election moves
Since the last presidential election, where Musk cast his ballot for the Biden-Harris ticket, the billionaire has moved away from the Democratic Party, registering instead as an independent. In recent months, not only did he give Trump his endorsement but also pledged to donate $45 million a month. He backtracked on the monetary pledge.
X, which Musk intends to make the “everything app,” has been the place for some of the 2024 cycle’s most memorable moments.
Last month, President Joe Biden revealed he was withdrawing his bid for reelection in a letter posted on X. In August 2023, Trump skipped the Republican primary debate and opted for a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. This interview aired on X minutes after the debate began.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leaned on the platform to officially launch his bid for president, but technical difficulties mired the conversation that garnered an overload of 400,000 listeners. Musk said he plans to conduct “system scaling tests” in the hours leading up to his chat with Trump to avoid such problems.
As an alternative to ChatGPT, X has an artificial intelligence “anti-woke” chatbot, Grok, which, like other AI tools, is under scrutiny for spreading disinformation. Five secretaries of state in a letter to X urged Musk to “immediately implement changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”
Also under investigation is the Musk-backed and funded America political action committee, which is supporting Trump. The PAC set up a website to help register people to vote in Michigan and other battleground states and allegedly collected this data, as CNBC reported earlier in August.
Could Elon Musk be Trump’s energy czar?
Trump and Musk are increasingly seen working together. Last week, Trump at a rally said he has “no choice” but to support electric vehicles. “Because Elon endorsed me,” the former president said.
“I’m for them for a small slice,” Trump added, noting that “you want to have gas-propelled cars, you want to have hybrids, you want to have every kind of a car imaginable.”
Musk, who is concerned about global warming and is the owner of Tesla, the most dominant automaker in the EV market, has the chance to influence Trump on climate as well as space policy. (Musk also owns advanced rocket company SpaceX.)
The Harris campaign, in response to Trump’s close contact with Musk said, “Elon knows Trump is a sucker who will sell America out, cutting his taxes while raising taxes on the middle class.” The campaign spokesperson added, “Vice President Harris has been standing up to people like Elon and fighting for the middle class her entire career — and it’s why she is going to win in November,” as Politico reported.
Fact-checking on social media hits a low
From time to time, Musk posts conspiracy theories to his nearly 194 million followers, the biggest account on the platform. He recently shared an AI-generated campaign video for Harris, where she says, “I am the ultimate diversity hire.” Musk wrote, “This is amazing,” with a laughing emoji. Many defended that as a party. Musk also boosted a claim that Democrats are allowing migrants to illegally cross the border as a way of “importing voters.” None of these posts earned a community note, a crowd-sourced information check on X.
But it’s not just X. Social media platforms across the board have slowly backed away from fact-checking. This comes after Republican talking heads and research showed the flagged information was influencing the result of the election in 2020, as The Guardian reported.
“I think X really kind of sticks out as a place where that change has been striking, and for it to come from the very top kind of just shows how much of an issue it is,” said Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.
Despite his political affiliations, Musk told The Atlantic magazine he will accept the results of the 2024 election, even if Harris wins.
“The will of the people must be recognized,” he said. “If there are questions of election integrity, they should be properly investigated and neither be dismissed out of hand nor unreasonably questioned. If, after review of the election results, it turns out that Kamala wins, that win should be recognized and not disputed.”