Trump Chats With Musk in X Return

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Facts

• Former US Pres. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, returned to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday by sitting with X owner Elon Musk for an X Spaces interview that covered several topics, including the EU, China, climate change, immigration, and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.^[1]
• Trump, a frequent poster on Twitter during his presidency, was banned from the platform after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol, but Musk reinstated him shortly after purchasing the site in October 2022. However, Trump had posted just once since his return.^[1]
• During the two-hour interview — watched by as many as 1.3M concurrent viewers — Trump repeated some controversial claims about illegal immigration and inflation. Musk, who endorsed Trump after he survived an assassination attempt, agreed with many of Trump's statements.^[2]
• Trump agreed with Musk's proposal to create a Government Efficiency Commission to evaluate government spending and eliminate any expenditures that aren't deemed to be sensible. He also said he would 'love' for Musk to be part of such a commission.^[3]
• The conversation began more than 40 minutes later than scheduled because of what Musk called 'a massive DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack' that crashed X Spaces.^[4]
• In addition, the sound of Trump's voice gained the attention of many listeners, with some saying that he spoke with a lisp and slurred his words. It was unknown whether this may have been related to a technical glitch.^[5]

Sources: ^[1]Al Jazeera, ^[2]Reuters.com, ^[3]Daily Wire, ^[4]TechCrunch and ^[5]Newsweek.

Narratives

• Republican narrative, as provided by FOX News. This was a great opportunity for Trump to have a laid-back chat with one of the most famous men on Earth in front of a worldwide audience and elaborate on his policy issues, including immigration, inflation, and education. Meanwhile, Harris continues to dodge the media while refusing to answer questions about her extreme-left positions on these issues.
• Democratic narrative, as provided by The New Republic. Chalk this up as another trainwreck for the Trump campaign. The interview was hampered by technical difficulties and Trump's speaking troubles. Most of all, it was filled with his rantings that have been disproven time and again. Harris' growing popularity is obviously pushing the former president to the edge and his campaign can't stop the freefall.

Predictions