The usual suspects were out in force ahead of former President Donald Trump’s Monday night interview with tech titan Elon Musk on X. As panic began to set in among the “enlightened” class over what Trump might say, warnings of the disinformation and misinformation that was sure to come filled the airwaves.
The opening salvo came from a surprising source – European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton – who reminded Musk of the EU’s content rules in a Monday morning letter. Mary Chastain covered that story here.
At Monday’s White House press briefing, Washington Post correspondent Cleve Wootson asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “what role does the White House or the president have … stopping the spread of that [misinformation] or sort of intervening in that?”
During the interview, the Harris campaign took to X – which they refuse to call “X,” to excoriate Musk for “using his purchased platform … to spread Trump’s unhinged and hateful agenda to millions of users.” They also asked supporters to “chip in $25 now to help Kamala and Tim have the resources to respond to their lies.”
The post continued: “The richest person in the world is a lackey for Team MAGA. … Now, Musk is using his vast fortune and broad reach to try to control our democracy.”
Democrats really do accuse others of what they are actually doing. Somewhere, Saul Alinsky must be proud.
At any rate, following a delayed start due to technical issues, the event that Trump called “the interview of the century” began. And two hours later, the press pounced. As they say on Fox News, the “bat signal” went out from the Democratic National Committee or whatever entity it is that disseminates the narrative of the day to the legacy media. And predictably, the event was widely panned by all.
Below is a round-up of the largely negative media reaction to the interview.
One of the most brutal accounts of the interview came from USA Today’s Rex Huppke. His headline read, “Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.” Except for the technical issues before the conversation began, Huppke failed to explain to readers precisely why it was an unmitigated disaster.
According to Huppke, “He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind. He was also badly slurring his words, raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being. … He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.
He noted that “Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert. He did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth.
“I’m not going to quote anything Trump said in the interview because it was either too stupid to merit transcription or a mere repetition of the nonsense he spouts at every rally he holds,” Huppke wrote. “A big part of Trump’s problem right now is he has become almost unbearably boring. Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.”
At the end of his sophomoric rant, Huppke told readers he is now convinced that Harris can beat Trump.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this much-hyped event is that there wasn’t one.
None of the commentary I’ve read or watched came anywhere close to Huppke’s scathing portrayal of the discussion. Nor, however, was it flattering to the former president.
The morning edition of Politico Playbook described the interview as a “two-hour-plus meander through the former president’s usual obsessions, which only occasionally touched on his actual opponent, VP Kamala Harris.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote: “It was hyped by Trump’s team as ‘the interview of the century,’ but the audio-only event felt more like overhearing a telephone call, often with rambling, between two figures who have grown closer as Musk’s politics have shifted to the right.”
The Journal called Trump out for “falsely claiming that ‘over 20 million people’ entered the U.S. having escaped prisons, mental institutions or insane asylums.” They also criticized him for inflating the number of illegal immigrants that crossed into the country last month. Trump is prone to exaggeration.
Axios’ reporter Stef Kight joined CNBC on Tuesday morning to discuss the interview. Aside from a recounting of the issues covered by the two men and a bit of analysis of both campaigns’ strategies for victory in November, there was nothing remarkable or disparaging about it.
Billed on X as an “unscripted” interview “with no limits on subject matter,” it was the type of occasion that typically causes Republicans to brace themselves for the type of inflammatory remark that Trump has become famous for. But that wasn’t necessary.
Their positions on the issues were pretty much aligned except for climate change. My feeling is that it really didn’t change anyone’s mind, one way or the other.
The real story was written before a single word was uttered. As Democrats try to run out the clock before Americans discover their candidate is an empty vessel, we watched as our “reasonable” and “enlightened” friends across the aisle humiliated themselves to prevent Trump from getting his message out.
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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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