Elon gave Trump 1 million listeners. Trump gave his greatest hits.
Former President Donald Trump and billionaire businessman Elon Musk live-streamed a rambling conversation on Musk’s social media platform, X, on Monday.
Former President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday held a much-anticipated conversation live-streamed through Musk’s social media platform, X.
The stream began with technical difficulties, which Musk blamed on a “massive DDOS attack,” though no evidence of such an attack was immediately available. The X platform faced similar technical difficulties and delays when Musk interviewed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the site last year.
After a 42-minute delay, Musk began the stream by saying, “This massive attack illustrates there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say.”
The pair then launched into a discussion, beginning with a 15-minute retelling of Trump’s perspective of the mid-July assassination attempt against him — which the former President said at the RNC he would never publicly discuss again.
The conversation at times garnered an audience as large as 1,324,994 people.
After the discussion of the assassination attempt, Trump and Musk segued into talking about illegal immigration, claiming countries such as Venezuela are sending their “nonproductive people” and “criminals,” “murderers,” and “rapists” to the United States.
“Here’s what’s happening: crime all over the world is down,” Trump said. “And wait til you get the numbers that we have, you know, this is migrant crime.”
The FBI’s 2024 Quarterly Crime Report indicates violent crime is down 15.2% when comparing statistics from January through March of 2023 to the same period in 2024.
It was during the discussion of illegal immigration that Trump launched his attacks on his current political rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump has blamed for ongoing conflict and high rates of migrants crossing through the US-Mexico border.
“We cannot have her, she’s incompetent — she’s as bad as Biden,” Trump said.
A potential role for Musk in a second Trump administration
Trump largely monopolized the conversation, with Musk only occasionally chiming in during the first hour of the call to prompt the former president on topics like illegal immigration. However, when the topic of government spending arose, Musk’s engagement became more pronounced.
Musk said he’d be “happy to help out” with a government efficiency commission, which Trump seemed open to, saying: “You’re the greatest cutter.”
“I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone.’ So every one of you is gone, and you are the greatest,” Trump said, praising Musk. “You would be very good. Oh, you would love it.”
The National Labor Relations Board ultimately dismissed claims that Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, illegally fired employees at one of its factories who were in the process of unionizing, Reuters reported last year. Tesla continues to have a reputation for its anti-union practices and brutal layoffs.
The Harris campaign seized upon Trump’s praise of Musk for his strong anti-union stance, reposting a clip from the conversation with the caption, “Trump praises billionaire Elon Musk for firing workers who were striking for better pay and working conditions.”
Trump also said he will “need an Elon Musk” to close the Department of Education, and move education back to the states.
Under a state-run education system, “Not every state will do great,” Trump said.
“The states that basically aren’t doing good, well — you look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he’s terrible, he does a terrible job. So he’s not going to do great with education. But of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great and 15 of them or 20 of them will be as good as Norway.”
The rest, Trump said, “won’t do well.”
About an hour into the conversation, Trump praised the Tesla CEO for moving the headquarters of SpaceX out of California.
The conversation then shifted to environmentalism and oil and gas, issues on which Musk — once an environmental champion — described himself as “moderate.”
“I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry,” Musk said.
The contentious history between Trump and Musk
Trump and Musk have forged a highly visible alliance over the past year, but their relationship was not always so amiable.
Musk sat on Trump’s business advisory groups during the former president’s first term. But in 2017, Musk departed after Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord. At the time, Musk declared in a Twitter post that “climate change is real,” and said the US leaving the accord wasn’t good for the country or the world.
President Joe Biden in January 2021 rejoined the Paris agreement.
But in May 2022, Musk blasted the Biden administration, arguing that it had done everything it could to “ignore” Tesla. The business leader then announced he would support the GOP.
In recent years, Musk has embraced more conservative positions on X, especially concerning his opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and his views on gender identity.
And Musk has connected with Trump on everything from their mutual disapproval of Biden’s handling of the presidency to their views on immigration and border security.
While Musk’s public statements have increasingly hinted at his support of the GOP nominee, it wasn’t until the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump that Musk came out in support of the former president, offering his full endorsement.
