After a glitchy start, Trump encounters a sympathetic interviewer in Elon Musk

Donald Trump’s return to the social media platform X, more than three years after he was banned following his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, got off to an awkward start Monday as his scheduled live X conversation with tech billionaire Elon Musk was beset by technical glitches. A typical question from Musk: “Would it be accurate to say you’re supportive of legal immigration, but we also need to shut down unvetted illegal immigration?” Even when Musk asked new questions — probing Trump on European Commissioner Thierry Breton’s letter to Musk earlier that day urging him to adhere to European Union regulations and moderate “potentially harmful content” — he did not press Trump as the GOP nominee avoided answering and pivoted to his typical complaints about NATO. “I think you’re the right path.” Until Monday, Trump had posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter only once since Musk bought the site and reinstated his account in November 2022. Before the event started, Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesman, dismissed it as a platform for lies, characterizing Trump and his “billionaire sugar daddy” as “infamous for their relationship with the truth.” After it wrapped up, the Harris-Walz campaign was quick to mock the conversation: “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 said in a statement. A year ago, Trump used X when he skipped the first GOP presidential primary debate and sought to undercut his Republican opponents by appearing in a prerecorded interview with former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, which aired on X. X, then called Twitter, “permanently suspended” Trump’s account in 2021 after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the election.