Trump - Musk, attacks with the EU. Brussels: Breton letter not agreed with us
Trump seeks prominence after Harris' advance. Musk the centrality of his controversial platform. But X jams before giving voice to Republican
4' min read
Key points
4' min read
Donald Trump returned to X, the former Twitter, for a live interview with his big supporter Elon Musk , billed as a friendly 'conversation'. But with high stakes for both: for Trump trying to regain the spotlight, after the advance in the polls of Democratic rival Kamala Harris. For Musk to confirm the centrality of his platform, eroded by his controversial management and his openings to the radical right.
"Delay due to massive cyber-attack"
.The debut was in fact tinged with yellow: the event was delayed by 40 minutes, compared to the scheduled American 8pm, due to a paralysis of the service. And there was immediate controversy: Musk alluded to a potential cyber-attack, a conspiracy to silence Trump, without providing evidence. For a long time those who tried to connect were met with responses such as 'no details available', bringing to mind past livestream X flops (most notably the live launch of Republican primary candidate Ron DeSantis). The tech billionaire nevertheless donned the anchor's shoes, held for two hours, with X soon indicating that the connected audience had exceeded one million.
Trump's slogans
.'There's no script and no topic limits, so it should be a lot of fun! If you have specific questions and comments, post them in the chat,' Musk had said in publicising the event. In reality, his questions were all very soft, in a show of 'brotherhood' between the two tycoons, with Trump reiterating without objection his most cherished slogans, extreme and often heedless of inaccuracies or falsehoods. From his crusades against illegal immigrants, defined as an army of criminals, to his boast of being able to instil fear and respect in foreign leaders, friend and foe alike. He has proposed abolishing the Department of Education. He has called inflation under Joe Biden and Harris the 'worst in a hundred years' (at best it has been since the 1980s). He has railed against the lawsuits against him as political persecution orchestrated by Biden. And he has flaunted positive superlatives to describe his initial tenure in the White House, which he intends to repeat, and he has hurled criticism at Harris as a left-wing 'extremist' who would lead the country to ruin.
Discussions on global warming
.There was only one slight disagreement between the two protagonists in the chat: on the seriousness of climate change. Trump went so far as to say that higher ocean levels due to global warming are fine because they create more real estate with water views. Musk without raging spoke of the greenhouse effect in terms of a real challenge.
Musk: EU attempts censorship
There was no shortage of direct controversy with Europe. Musk pointed out that he had received a letter from the EU commissioner for the internal market, Therry Breton, who immediately warned him to moderate the content of the Trump interview, in compliance with the new European legislation on digital services in terms of control and removal of problematic or illegal content. He otherwise threatened to 'use all the tools at our disposal, including temporary measures, to protect European citizens'.
