Elon Musk to interview Trump at X in case he draws attention to 2024 race

WASHINGTON – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk will interview Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on social media network X on Monday in an event that could inject more surprises into the tumultuous US presidential election.

The interview, scheduled for 8 p.m. ET, could give the former president an opportunity to grab attention at a time when his campaign is seen as fading.

His Democratic rival for the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, has erased Trump’s lead in opinion polls and energized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies.

The interview on Musk’s social media platform could allow Trump to reach a different audience than the conservative faithful who attend his rallies and watch his Fox News interviews.

However, similar events on the platform have been plagued by technical problems.

“I’ll be doing some system scaling tests tonight and tomorrow before the chat,” Musk wrote on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.

The interview will be hosted live using Trump’s official X account, his campaign said Sunday.

Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month under Musk’s ownership of X after it was suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress by his supporters.

Trump posts frequently on his social media platform Truth Social, which launched in February 2022.

He has returned to X only once since his access was restored with a post opens new tab in August 2023 appealing for donations and showing his Fulton County Jail mug shot.

Musk may prove to be an unusual interviewer. The world’s richest person supported former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden in 2020, but has since moved to the right and supported the Republican after the assassination attempt on Trump in July.

Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla Inc., also started a fundraising organization to support Trump’s campaign.

The political action committee is under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of the state’s voter information collection laws.

Trump, a longtime critic of electric vehicles, shifted gears after Musk’s endorsement.

“I’m for electric cars. I must be, because Elon supported me a lot. So I have no choice,” Trump said at a rally in early August.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fein, campaigning in support of Harris, called Trump a “sellout.”

The Biden administration has worked to popularize electric vehicles through tax cuts and other support as part of its broader goal to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

Republicans in Congress have opposed these subsidies. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s vice presidential running mate, said Biden’s policy simply subsidizes rich people who buy cars.

Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in 2022 and subsequently reduced content moderation that has resulted in a dramatic increase in hate speech, civil rights groups have said.

Meanwhile, the entrepreneur has been embroiled in a whirlwind of additional controversy.

He has falsely accused Biden and the Democratic Party of opening the US borders to undocumented immigrants in a ploy to increase the number of potential Democratic voters.

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections.

Musk in November 2023 approved an anti-Semitic post on X that said members of the Jewish community were inciting hatred against white people.

He defended himself by saying the user was speaking “the actual truth”. Musk has also attacked the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization that works to combat anti-Semitism, accusing it, without evidence, of being responsible for the drop in X ads.