Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump's scheduled interview with Elon Musk on the billionaire entrepreneur's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday evening ran into technical difficulties at the outset. Dana Mattioli, a Wall Street Journal reporter, talks about Musk’s increased involvement with right-wing politics.
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00:00Welcome back. Former US president and current Republican hopeful Donald Trump
00:05was supposed to be interviewed tonight by Elon Musk on X, but technical issues
00:09have forced a change of plans. Many people haven't been able to get into the
00:13chat and listen to the conversation. Journalist Nick Harper is following this
00:17story for us from Washington. Nick, I'm just on X looking at people's comments.
00:22Some people have been waiting for 15-20 minutes trying to get in. I know that you
00:27were not able to get in either. Elon Musk has tweeted about what went wrong.
00:32What is he saying? Yeah, the idea was that I was meant to come on now and tell
00:37you about everything I'd heard in the last 35 minutes. That has not been the
00:41case. Elon Musk has said there appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Now
00:47that's a type of cyber attack where there are actors who are trying to flood
00:51servers to disrupt or interrupt the ability for people to get on to that
00:57site. He's gone on to say that X is working to shut it down. Worst case we
01:01proceed with a smaller group of live listeners and post the conversation
01:05later. He has since updated to say that he plans to have a smaller number of
01:09concurrent listeners at 8.30 Eastern and then post the unedited audio
01:14immediately afterwards. I just tried to get on and I actually was able to. There
01:19was just music in the background. There was no conversation. In theory things
01:24are up and running but the problem is over the last 30-35 minutes people like
01:29myself have been logging in to try and listen. I was given a screen that at one
01:33point said details not available. At another point it said this space is not
01:37available and there was an emoji of a monkey holding its head in its hands. It
01:42is disastrous for X, for Donald Trump. The hope was that everyone would be able
01:46to listen live. Remember of course that something like this went spectacularly
01:50wrong just over a year ago in May 2023 where Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor,
01:56announcing his presidential bid on X was trying to have that conversation with
02:01Elon Musk. It was beset by technical issues like the type we've seen this
02:05evening. Many people simply not able to log on. We'll have to wait and see now
02:09whether people can get on and whether that conversation gets underway. Nick, I'm
02:14just seeing a lot of people posting that very image, the emoji of a monkey
02:18holding its head that you just described. Some people have also said
02:22just over 200,000 are listening in when it flashes up and then disables again. So
02:29definitely still beset by technical problems. Let's talk a little bit about
02:34the why. Why had Elon Musk arranged this interview? The two men had certainly not
02:40always seen eye to eye. In fact they publicly exchanged jabs at one point not
02:46that long ago. But Elon Musk now seems to be firmly in Donald Trump's camp. What
02:51led to this change? Yeah really not that long ago, only in the last year and a
02:57half, very publicly attacking one another on X and Trump's social media platform
03:03Truth Social. And remember that Elon Musk was a Democrat until recent times when
03:08he says that he became disillusioned with the Biden administration. There was
03:12also a very public snub in 2021 when he was not invited to the White House
03:17electric vehicle event, a big conference for electric vehicle makers. Obviously he
03:22is the owner of Tesla but was not invited. Then he moved his allegiance to
03:27Ron DeSantis and tried to host that launch event before saying that he was
03:31backing publicly Donald Trump just over a couple of weeks ago after that
03:35assassination attempt. He said that he would back Donald Trump and endorse him.
03:39He's now trying to get voters rallying around Donald Trump, trying to fundraise
03:43for him. And remember ideologically they are very much aligned. They both feel
03:48that there was election fraud in the 2020 election. They both battle against
03:53big government, battle against the media. So there are certain things that they
03:57certainly agree on, things that potentially could be discussed if this
04:01interview gets underway during the course of this evening. Nick thank you so
04:05much for that and I know that we're all trying to find out what is being
04:08said in this interview but it looks like not too many people have been
04:12successful. Thank you so much Nick. Now let's talk some more about Elon Musk's
04:17endorsement of Donald Trump and his efforts to get the former president
04:20reelected. Dana Matteoli is a Wall Street Journal reporter. She co-authored an
04:26article today for her paper titled inside Elon Musk's hands-on push to win
04:30800,000 voters for Trump. She's also the author of The Everything War, Amazon's
04:36ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power. Dana thank you
04:40so much for making time for us tonight. Thank you for having me. Dana this is
04:45Elon Musk's first really overt step into politics. He has been heavily involved in
04:52this super PAC. How has it been going? Yeah so he started this super PAC back
04:59in the spring is when he started mobilizing and meeting with vendors and
05:03political consultants and it followed you know this break from the Democratic
05:07Party that we've been reporting about with his frustration with the Biden
05:10administration but also this ideological shift that we've seen him undergone
05:14undergo and you know they had hired vendors with the stated goal of getting
05:20800,000 low propensity voters in swing states to show up for Donald Trump and
05:24to register new voters and you know they had started down that path but more
05:28recently just a few weeks ago Elon signed off on firing many of the vendors
05:33which means that they've had a bunch of setbacks and you know stumbles as it
05:38relates to obtaining those goals. I wanted to ask you Dana I was just
05:42talking to our journalist Nick Harper about this a few years ago it was more
05:47complex to describe where Elon Musk stood politically whether he was
05:53libertarian he was independent what happened between him and the Democrats
05:58because we have now seen him heavily promoting Trump on X and attacking
06:02Kamala Harris what brought us to this point? Yeah that's right so he has said
06:09that up until the last few years he exclusively voted Democrat you know if
06:14you think about the mission of some of his companies they're very much about
06:17not using fossil fuels about being more environmentally sustainable really
06:21emissions aligns more with the Democratic Party but what we've seen is
06:25that you know the Biden administration shunned Elon from the White House the
06:30UAW the United Auto Workers Union basically had an ultimatum of sorts in
06:35place that he could not be mentioned he could not be invited to White House
06:39events and instead they were to focus on US auto companies with unions even
06:47though they had a much smaller share of EV market share and that really did you
06:51know create some tension between Elon and the Biden administration and then
06:56you know as he accumulated more and more wealth he's the richest person in the
06:59world more progressive parts of the Democratic wing have villainized him in
07:03some ways have called you know made him the poster boy for corporate greed or
07:07not paying the fair share of taxes so it was this confluence of events and the
07:12Democrats that really created this opening for him to now move more toward
07:16the Republicans and you know we saw him come out with this endorsement for
07:20Donald Trump after the the assassination attempt but in the
07:23background of all of that he's been meeting with GOP donors and talking
07:27about the state of the country and how to get Donald Trump reelected and that
07:31that culminated with this America pack which is sort of historic in terms of
07:36what it's trying to do and who is involved I remember Dana I was co-hosting
07:41a live special on the night that there was an assassination attempt on on
07:45Donald Trump and I remember that tweet by by Elon Musk or a post that that
07:51took me aback a bit because he said you know he was glad that he was alive and
07:55posted that that that picture of course with Donald Trump rising up you know
08:01with a fist pump and saying and this is why I endorse him and I thought that was
08:05the first time I'd seen it put so openly tell me what are some of the benefits
08:10someone like Elon Musk or other big tech companies behind this super PAC might
08:15gain if we do end up seeing a second Trump presidency well first of all I
08:21think the Trump administration has a lot to gain from their support I mean
08:24there's a lot of money being dedicated from this one super PAC to his campaign
08:28and to get out the vote efforts for the campaign and door-knocking and signing
08:32up voters and getting people to register so that's one thing and then someone
08:36like Elon Musk who's got a giant microphone first of all he's someone in
08:40the business community that's you know kind of iconic he's this big titan of
08:44industry he oversees six different companies many of them very successful
08:48on top of that he owns he bought Twitter he owned is the giant the biggest
08:54microphone that you could have as it relates to social media so for someone
08:58like that to own the platform and then be endorsing you and and you know having
09:02a lot of pro Donald Trump rhetoric on the platform I think that's also very
09:06important as it relates to what these companies could get from a Trump
09:10presidency you know there's been a sense when we speak to VCs venture capital
09:14capitalists and CEOs in the valley that they've been frustrated by the antitrust
09:19environment under under the Biden administration as it relates to tech
09:22there have been a lot of challenged mergers they are frustrated by the way
09:26that cryptocurrency has been handled by the Biden administration it's not viewed
09:30as cryptocurrency friendly whereas Trump has made that a big selling point of a
09:35second administration and there are other things that they're worried about
09:38in Democratic hands like artificial intelligence so you could see that there
09:42could be ways where they want to influence potential policy as relates to
09:47big tech innovation artificial intelligence and the like hmm tell me of
09:53course as you mentioned he has an extremely powerful microphone I mean he
09:57has hundred and ninety three million followers on X how will musks shift to
10:05the Republican mindset or at least his very public endorsement of Donald Trump
10:11we can't really tell where he might be ideologically fully how might that
10:18influence his followers when it's time to cast their vote in this year's
10:21election what demographic does this work on well I would say that Elon is sort of
10:27singular in terms of his fan base his shareholders are sort of rabid about him
10:32and his leadership and he's got an army of followers that really look up to him
10:37and you know listen to every word he says so I think he is very influential
10:41in those communities and then also having such a big-name CEO come out and
10:46support of Donald Trump where you know the last election cycle CEOs really
10:50didn't do that they were trying to distance themselves from the Trump
10:52campaign because of different things that had happened it emboldens a lot of
10:58other people to come out and show their support too and we've seen that in
11:02Silicon Valley in particular Dana thank you so much for that thanks for your
11:07time and your expertise tonight thanks for having me
11:11Dana Mattioli is a Wall Street Journal reporter and she joined us from Brooklyn
11:15New York