Rekha Prajapati
WASHINGTON: In a high-profile comeback to the now-defunct social media network known as Twitter, Donald Trump detailed his assassination attempt in graphic detail and pledged the greatest deportation in American history. However, the chat was marred by technical difficulties.
Trump said to Elon Musk, the owner of X, “As much as I like you, if I had not turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now.”
Musk said, “There are some really tough characters out there.” “And they’ll do whatever they want to do if they don’t think the president of the United States is tough.”
Nevertheless, the meeting demonstrated how drastically the political landscape in the United States has changed in less than four years, following Trump’s permanent ban by the former leadership of the social media platform for disseminating false information that ignited the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, and threatened the fundamental basis of American democracy.
Under Musk’s direction, this kind of misinformation has flourished at X.
Additionally, the former president was hoping to personally address millions of voters throughout the session. It was also X’s chance to make amends after several setbacks, since the platform primarily dependsed on politics.
It didn’t start off that way.
The interview had not started even forty minutes after the stated start time, with over 878,000 people still participating in the discussion. A notification stating, “Details not available,” was seen by several users.
The “interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in,” according to a tweet from Trump’s staff. Musk also expressed regret for the delayed start of the conference and attributed it to a “massive attack” that overloaded the company’s infrastructure.
Supporters of Trump were visibly irritated.
“Not accessible???? Glenn Beck, a conservative pundit, remarked, “I centered my entire day around this.”
Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, said, “Please let Elon know we can’t join.”
The rough beginning was evocative of a May 2023 social media exchange between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk. The Republican governor used the social networking site to formally declare his candidacy for president. The launch was terrible, plagued by technical difficulties and overwhelming over 400,000 dial-in attempts.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, pointed out that at the time, Trump made fun of DeSantis.
“Whoa! DeSanctus’s Twitter debut is a complete failure! His campaign as a whole will fail miserably. Observe! Trump said in a statement that Harris’ team sent on Monday.
The conversation on Monday shed insight on how Trump and Musk, two of the most powerful men in the world, have changed over the course of one election season from fierce adversaries to improbable partners.
Up until a few years ago, Musk identified as a Democrat. In 2022, he said that Trump was too elderly to serve as president once again. Nevertheless, two days after Trump’s attempted assassination last month, Musk openly praised him.
Trump has now moderated his condemnation of electric cars, pointing to Musk’s direction of Tesla. And at least on Monday, Trump made a strong comeback on Musk’s social media network. In the hours before the Musk interview, the former president posted eight times or more.
Long before he gave Trump his support, Musk’s tweets and behavior on the platform became more and more to the right. He also attempted to influence global political conversation by using X. He has sparred with a Brazilian court over censorship, decried the “woke mind virus,” and spread false rumors that Democrats are surreptitiously bringing in foreign voters to cast ballots in US elections.
In addition, Musk has restored accounts that had been suspended, including those of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Donald Trump, who had been barred from the then-Twitter site two days after the incident on January 6 due to “the risk of further incitement of violence.” Trump’s account was restored when Musk acquired the business in November 2022, but he didn’t tweet until Monday. The former president said that he was content on his own Truth Social website, which he had started during the suspension.
Compared to Truth Social, which went public earlier this year, Trump’s following on X is much bigger. On Truth Social, Trump has just over 7.5 million followers, whereas 88 million people follow his very inactive X account. With over 193 million followers, Musk’s account, which conducted the interview, is very popular.
The conversation sparked an early warning from Europe, a reminder that everyone was watching.
The European Union’s commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, a French businessman, forewarned Musk that his interview with Trump would result in the “amplification of harmful content.” Breton encouraged Musk to “ensure X’s compliance” with EU legislation, particularly the Digital Services Act, which was passed in 2022 to address a variety of concerns, including misinformation, in a letter that was posted on X.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, asked the EU to “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election” in a statement. “An enemy of free speech, the EU has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign,” he said.
