- The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 13, 2024

The Harris campaign criticized X owner Elon Musk’s interview of former President Donald Trump, calling them both “self-obsessed rich guys.”

Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com,” the campaign said in a statement.

Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” it said.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung on X called out the Harris campaign for not having a name associated with the statement.

“All these statements, yet nobody ever puts their name on them,” he wrote. “F—- cowards.”

Mr. Trump sat down with Mr. Musk on Monday for an interview, which started roughly 45 minutes late because of technical issues.

The Harris-Walz campaign posted short sound bites on its X page of topics the two-hour interview touched on. One sound bite post hit Mr. Trump on discussing climate change and rising sea levels.

“Trump, slurring, says he’s okay with climate change and rising sea levels because he thinks he’ll ’have more oceanfront property,’” the campaign said in the post.

In another post with a sound bite, the campaign criticized the former president for praising Mr. Musk “for firing workers who were striking for better pay and working conditions.”

Another highlights Mr. Trump talking about closing the Department of Education.

This was Mr. Trump’s first time back on the social media site since promoting his mug shot on Aug. 24, 2023, after he surrendered to the Fulton County, Georgia, jail for his election interference case. He also posted several campaign advertisements on his page ahead of the interview.

Mr. Musk posted Sunday on his X account that the interview with Mr. Trump would be “unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!”

Mr. Trump has almost exclusively used his own social media site, Truth Social, since its first post on Feb. 16, 2022, but he and Mr. Musk are friendly, and Mr. Musk has endorsed the former president.

Before that, Mr. Trump’s last post was Jan. 8, 2021, before his account was suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Musk reinstated the former president’s X account after he bought the social media site in 2022.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.

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