On Monday, Donald Trump sat down with Elon Musk on Spaces, X’s platform for live audio discussions, so that the ex-president could lie, insult his opponents, and ramble on barely coherently in front of someone who is more than willing to babysit him through an interview while not pushing back on any misinformation Trump is bound to spew.
Source: Erin SCHAFF / POOL / AFP/ Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto/ Shannon Stapleton-Po / Getty
The interview between Orange Foolius and Darth Apartheid got off to a rocky start with a 45-minute delay due to technical issues, which Musk blamed on a “massive DDOS attack.”
Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty
Musk, of course, provided zero evidence that his elaborate dog and pony show with his partner in thinly veiled white nationalism was the target of an intentional cyber attack, but, as the New York Times noted, he did agree with a follower’s baseless remark that the outage was caused by “Dems fighting to ‘save’ Democracy from two massive disrupters.”
Once the interview finally got going, listeners were able to bore themselves to death by subjecting themselves to two full hours of Trump repeating the same old lies and leveling the same old attacks on the Biden administration and his new opponent in the general election, VP Kamala Harris. Occasionally, Musk would sort of guide Trump into speaking about actual issues like immigration and the economy while being very careful not to ask any tough questions that might fluster the Republican nominee, but, for the most part, Musk just sat there and agreed with everything Trump said like he was the world’s most disposable bobblehead. (To be fair, that might be one of the most accurate descriptions of Musk I’ve ever written.)
There was this one weird part of the interview when Trump complimented Harris’ appearance, calling her “beautiful,” which would have been wildly uncharacteristic of Trump—if it hadn’t come after a slew of personal insults regarding Harris’ intelligence and competence, and if it hadn’t turned out to be a backhanded compliment meant to point the finger at the media for depicting Harris as more attractive than he believes she truly is. (You can tell Trump has never taken an honest look in the mirror in the last few decades even after applying a fresh coat of spray tan.)
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From the Independent:
In the interview, Trump launched into a scathing critique of Harris calling her a “terrible” leader, before he swiftly drifted to fawning over her “beautiful” appearance.
“We need smart people, and people that have the ability to lead. She doesn’t have that ability. Can you imagine her with chairman Xi [Jinpin, President of the People’s Republic of China],” he said, speaking with a distinct lisp.
Musk, who remained agreeable throughout the two-hour interview, admitted that it “would be silly.”
“She is terrible, she is terrible,” Trump doubled down. “She’s getting a free ride.”
The former president then abruptly segued into talking about Harris’ looks, drawing comparison between her and the former first lady.
“I saw a picture of her on Time magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” Trump said of Harris, referring to the latest edition of Time magazine, which brands Harris’ campaign as “the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history.”
“She looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” Trump gushed as Musk met his comment with an awkward chuckle and a reserved, “yeah…”
“She didn’t look like Camilla,” Trump said, purposely butchering Harris’ name. “Of course, she’s a beautiful woman and we’ll leave it at that.”
“Right… well yeah, well, you know,” Musk said, before scrambling to change the subject and entering into a monologue about the American dream.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible Trump was actually trying to compliment Harris in order to get out from under criticism of his personal attacks on Harris, including the number of times he publicly questioned her racial identity. There’s also a story the Times published over the weekend, which included accounts from at least two people who claim they witnessed Trump call Harris a “b****” repeatedly during different conversations.
Either way, Harris’ campaign didn’t bother acknowledging Trump’s remarks about the 59-year-old’s appearance, but the campaign did describe Trump and Musk as “self-obsessed rich guys” who basically engaged in a circle-jerk of mediocre white men who are just extremely lucky they were born into wealth. (OK, the campaign didn’t say all that about the discussion between Mango Mussolini and Phony Stark, but only because they would never hire me as a spokesman.)
“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,” the campaign wrote in an official statement after the interview.
https://twitter.com/DisavowTrump20/status/1823159747308306741
I mean, they’re not wrong.