By Dave Andrusko
I first wrote about the fascinating interview the world’s richest had with former President Donald Trump on August 13, the day after these two titans talked. But Elon Musk was just getting warmed up.
His resources have helped off-set the over 1billion dollars accrued by pro-abortion Vice President Kamala (“I grew up in a middle-class family”) Harris. His has poured more than $75 million into a super PAC, “America PAC.”
More important yet was when he bought Twitter/X, it was like opening a chute: A flood of conservative opinions, previously blocked, rushed down the spillway.
Here’s what I wrote back in August with some details undated.
When Elon Musk interviewed pro-life former President Donald Trump last night, you certainly got your money’s worth if you waited out the glitches. Mr. Trump was in his element—the length of their discussion was around two hours—which is typical length when Trump has one of his huge rallies.
My wife and I listened. Here are four thoughts.
#1. Musk hypothesized that the delay was caused by a DDOS [Distributed Denial of Service Attack]. Mixed in with the usual attacks on Trump supporters, CNN media analyst Sara Fischer said it was more likely the overwhelming interest in the broadcast. Fischer told “CNN News Central” host Sara Sidner that DDOS is
Essentially, when somebody floods your system in order to shut it down. The problem with the DDOS attack, Sara, is that it often looks very much like just a very popular event and so we‘re just sort of having to take Musk‘s word for it.
“There has been third-party reporting that suggests it wasn’t a DDOS attack, it was just X’s systems responding to a flood of interest in this interview, but that actually speaks to some of the success of this interview, right?,” Fischer continued. “It was 40 minutes of delay, of glitches, but once it got up and running, you had, I saw, over two million people joining the space live. You had over 50 million people who viewed it.”
“Fischer said that the amount of traction speaks to how much “people wanted to hear from the president.”
#2. “Elon invited Kamala to do the same interview on the platform.” Matt Vespa reported. “She refused. I wonder why? Is it because she’s not ready for primetime and will be exposed as a horrible candidate? Probably.”
#3. Mr. Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter on January 8, 2021. At the time, he had a whopping 88 million followers. Once Mr. Musk bought Twitter (rebranded as “X”), he was invited back. For whatever reason, Trump did not post until yesterday. 619 million people are on X as of 2024, according to demandsagecom.
Musk reported the conversation reached an enormous audience:
Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion
Between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET, President Donald Trump’s Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump’s conversation on 𝕏, generating a total of 998 million views.
#4. The usual suspects—including, of course, the New York Times—spent their time bashing Trump: “Live Election Updates: Trump-Musk Chat Is Heavy on Talking Points and Familiar Falsehoods.”
A far more interesting piece appeared in the Washington Post under the headline “Trump’s Musk interview is latest effort to shore up white male base.”
Leigh Ann Caldwell and Marianna Sotomayor begin by noting that “Trump’s conversation with Musk had more than a million live listeners on X.”
They quote “several Republican operatives” who characterize last night’s discussion as partly intended to “reach a specific pro-Trump group: young White men.”
You might ask: Hasn’t Trump already won over White male voters? Sure, White men have long made up a key portion of Trump’s base. But there are cracks in that base. In 2016, he won White men by 30 points over Hillary Clinton, according to an analysis of voters by Pew Research Center. But he only beat Joe Biden among White men by 17 points in 2020 — a big difference in a close election.
Jennifer Oliver O’Connell offered a complementary perspective under the headline “Trump on X Taps Into a Voting Bloc That Legacy Media Doesn’t Even Know Exists.”
She writes
Trump and his VP running mate JD Vance have been speaking to these influencers and appearing on their podcasts and shows, so who knows how many have tuned in Monday night?
Oliver O’Connell quotes from a tweet from The View’s Alyssa Farah Griffin who argues
Trump: -gets back on Twitter -does interview with Elon -puts out ad about the Mar-a-lago raid He’s doubling down with his base. It gains him nothing with undecideds/ swing voters. Bizarre strategy 3 months out.
O’Connell has the last word and it captures perfectly what happened last night and throughout the campaign:
And how is she so sure that it gains nothing with undecided and swing voters? The people who tend to make up this demo do not respond to debates, and the media noise gives them a headache. But a conversation where Trump gets to lay out policy, discuss how the assassination attempt affected him, and define his opponent? That is something they can be drawn into.
So, who knows how many hearts and minds are being changed by hearing a non-adversarial and conversational Trump?
More at “5 days until the November 5 election. What do we know and what does it tell us?”
