Why Donald Trump's Interview With Elon Musk Was Destined To Crash And Burn

Donald Trump's former political adversary Ron DeSantis had to be cracking that unsettling smile of his and smugly licking pudding from his fingers after witnessing the fiasco that was Elon Musk's attempt to bring his interview with Trump to the masses on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Trump betrayed his own social media platform, Truth Social, to return to his former favorite internet haunt for the chat with X's owner. However, users were initially met with an error message when they tried to join the X Space. As AP noted, Trump previously gloated when Musk's website experienced similar technical difficulties during a 2023 interview with DeSantis. At the time, the real estate mogul and the Florida governor were both vying to be the GOP's presidential nominee. "Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. If a glitchy X interview is a portent of a doomed campaign, then Vice President Kamala Harris is going to be awkwardly laughing all the way to the Oval Office come November 2024.

Musk tried to save face by tweeting, "There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later." When X users finally got to hear the two men talk, one topic that Trump was chomping at the bit to talk about was his assassination attempt.

Back when Ron DeSantis was still Elon Musk's guy, the Tesla tycoon tweeted, "Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America." But then DeSantis' presidential campaign made like a Cybertruck in a car wash by ceasing to function. So, Musk, who had previously done a political U-turn after supporting President Joe Biden in 2020, made another dramatic shift in his views by endorsing Trump. Luckily for Musk, Trump seemed to bear no ill will toward him for reminding voters that he's long in the tooth, and the billionaires joked around like they were the best of friends.

Trump made sure to kick things off by bragging about the level of interest in their interview. There were reportedly around 1 million listeners at the 30-minute mark. Trump then spoke about his assassination attempt, claiming that it made him more religious. This revelation was followed by a special announcement: Trump was going to try to get some more political capital out of his brush with death by returning to the Pennsylvania town where it happened for another rally. Trump joked that he would open with the line, "As I was saying..." (per BBC News) In true Musk fashion, the X leader cut in to share what he believed to be a witty observation. "Before you were rudely interrupted," he quipped.

Elon Musk was there to lend a sympathetic ear as Donald Trump reminded everyone of a grave injustice that had been committed against him: Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race. He also admitted that he doesn't have as much sway over Russian President Vladimir Putin as he'd like everyone to believe. (Whoopsies!) Recounting a supposed conversation he had with the dictator, Trump said, "I told him, 'Don't do it. You can't do it, Vladimir.' He said, 'No way,' and I said, 'Way.'" Has there ever been a bigger failure of the art of the deal?

There was no softening of tone or a marked change in political rhetoric, but some listeners did notice that Trump's voice sounded different. "Trump, slurring, says he's okay with climate change and rising sea levels because he thinks he'll 'have more oceanfront property,'" read a tweet on the Kamala HG X account. "That phone screen must be just caked in spit at this point," wrote MeidasTouch Senior Digital Editor Acyn Torabi. Comic and host W. Kamau Bell offered a theory about why Trump was seemingly having such a tough time speaking clearly. "Is it possible because Trump was told that his interview with Elon wasn't being 'televised' that he thought that he could take his dentures out and didn't realize that then we could hear his lisp?" he suggested. Meanwhile, Kamala HQ was over on Truth Social trolling Trump with his old Ron DeSantis tweets. Just utter chaos.