Last night, I listened to most of the conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and this morning I picked up the 30 minutes remaining when I went to bed. I assume they were on Pacific Time, but we are not, and there was nothing in the conversation that couldn't wait till the morning.
I didn't know about the event till yesterday, and might have been intrigued enough to listen. As Musk himself said, you don't get a good feel for a person through campaign speeches, interviews, or even debates. He wanted a free-ranging conversation between himself and Donald Trump, and I thought that could be interesting.
What clinched my participation, however, was a question from yesterday's White House press briefing. I don't know the name of the journalist, or what organization he represents, and the C-Span cameras remained focused on Ms. Jean-Pierre, but you can hear well enough. The question begins at 20:00, if you want to confirm it, but this is from the transcript, with a few minor corrections to make it more readable. (emphasis mine)
Journalist: Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tonight on X. I don't know if the president is going to—feel free to say if he is or not—but I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It's an American issue. What role does the White House or the President have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that? Some of that was about campaign misinformation. But you know, it's a wider thing, right?
Jean-Pierre: You've heard us talk about this many times from here about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation, [I] don't have anything to read out from here about specific ways that we're working on it, but we believe that, that they have the responsibility. These are private companies, so we're also mindful of that too. But look, it is, I think it is incredibly important to call that out as you're doing. I just don't have any specifics on what we have been doing internally as it relates to the interviews. It's not something that I'm tracking and I'm sure the president's not tracking it either.
What did I just hear? A jounalist calling for the President to stop Musk and Trump having a conversation and sharing it on X with the American (and worldwide) public, First Amendment be damned? Of course I had to listen in!
It turned out to be a rather exciting event even before it started, because I couldn't get in to the conversation. Now, I had joined X back in 2015, when it was still Twitter, inspired by the Arab Spring and the realization that social media might be the best way to communicate in times of crisis. But I never did much at all with it, just kept it in my back pocket. So I figured my problems were just because I didn't know what I was doing.
Except that no one else could get in, either. It was rather fun, actually, trying one source after another, each one scrambling to see what was going on.
Just as the conversation was about to begin, X's servers had been hit by a massive DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack, presumably by someone who was even more disturbed by the prospect of Musk and Trump talking to the world than the anonymous journalist.
Do I really think that our government was behind the DDOS? No, though I wouldn't put it past them. But the coincidence of the journalist's question, and Jean-Pierre's non-specific "what we have been doing internally as it relates to the interviews," is noted. Hopefully we will eventually find out what happened. (Personally, I hope it was some prodigy hacker eager to test his cyber muscles against Elon Musk.) For now, it is enough that the busy computer bees at X managed to get out from under the problem quickly enough, and the show went on.
This link should take you to the full three-hour recording. No doubt there will be highlights or summaries to come, but there's a good deal of value to original, unscripted, unedited data. Collected excerpts always reflect bias one way or another. Judge for yourself if there was anything so frightening you think we need to abandon our Constitution. UPDATE: Musk just posted a link to a version with higher quality audio. It's also only two hours instead of three, but at a quick glance appears to be complete. I have no idea how they did that, but it does like a more approachable conversation at 2/3 the length!
Was it worth listening to? I think so. Was it spectacular? No. Was it frightening? No. Was there anything there at all that could possibly have been worth throwing out the First Amendment, let alone so casually? Absolutely not.
At first the conversation was actually boring. As impossible as this seems for two such men, both Musk and Trump seemed a bit nervous. After touching briefly on the near-assassination, Musk merely let Trump speak away, in whatever direction he wanted to go. Not surprisingly, it sounded like a campaign speech, with far too much emphasis on the flaws of his opponents and the wonderful things he did when he was in office. For all I can see, he's right, but I'm tired of hearing it. He did much better when he focused on the positive things he plans to do if he gets elected this time.
As time went on, however, Trump's obvious excitement at an "interview" in which he was allowed to keep talking wound down, and both he and Musk relaxed. From then on, the conversation became worth listening to. Again, there was nothing spectacular about it, but free-ranging conversations among highly intelligent people who respect each other are almost always interesting.
I think the conversation was a good idea, and I hope Kamala Harris takes Musk up on his invitation to do the same.
Given that Mr Musk has tweeted a deepfake video of her saying things like Joe Biden is senile and she doesn't know the first thing about running the country, has more recently tweeted that Kamala Harris has vowed to be a communist dictator on day one (including an AI image of her in a red uniform), and has called „interesting“ the suggestion that our democracy would be better if participation were limited to high status males, I doubt his sincerity and I doubt Ms Harris will take him up.
That would be her loss, then&mdashand ours. Anyone hoping to take on the responsibilities of the president of the United States should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate to voters how well she can handle a potentially hostile interview. If she can do well with Musk, perhaps it will engender more confidence in her ability to deal with the likes of Putin, Zelenskyy, Khamenei, and Kim Jong Un.
I see your point, and I can imagine her campaign advisors seeing it, doing the cost-benefit guesstimate and sticking with the bus tours through swing states.
