Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential marketing campaign on July 21, Donald Trump has been wandering within the media wilderness, unable to search out his means again into the nice and cozy glow of pundits’ consideration. Even a horrifically racist look in entrance of the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists in late July wasn’t sufficient to place the media again into the outrage-of-the-day groove. Trump has been relegated to the sidelines, fuming in regards to the dimension of Harris’ crowds.
On Monday evening, arguably the largest investor in getting Trump again into the White Home put his $44 billion buy of Twitter (now X) to work by conducting a greater than two-hour “conversation.” As our personal Kos famous, the occasion swiftly spiraled right into a catastrophe tormented by technical glitches and showcasing little greater than Trump’s incapability to finish a sentence.
On Tuesday morning, Musk was bragging in regards to the degree of X exercise that the occasion had generated. What he didn’t word was that quite a lot of that exercise was mocking Trump and Musk for his or her feeble performances.
Right here’s how main information shops are masking the dialog:
CNN: Was clear on how the occasion was an try by Musk to throw a lifeline to the foundering Trump, writing, “Tech titan Elon Musk threw open his X platform on Monday night, offering Donald Trump a pipeline free of fact checks for his falsehoods, conspiracy theories and extremism as he tries to slow the rise of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.” Even when Trump predicted that “60 million” immigrants have been ready to invade America if he misplaced, Musk solely agreed.
The Washington Put up: Discovered the occasion to be “two ideological allies touring the right-wing rhetorical bubble and, like new best friends in fourth grade, scrambling over each other to point out their favorite parts.” You realize, the place the great components have been repeats of lies Trump has been telling for years.
The Guardian: Pronounced the occasion “surprisingly dull” and referred to as it “a display of two planet-sized egos, toxic masculinity and breathtaking mendacity” earlier than noting that “Musk and Trump’s banal chatter about subjects such as radioactive vegetables and the defeat of Napoleon” made listeners crave the 40 minutes of “wallpaper music” that had crammed an earlier technical delay.
Reuters: Appeared stunned that in a night “marred by tech issues,” Trump lavished reward on Musk for firing tech employees. “‘You’re the greatest cutter,’ Trump said. ‘I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike—I won’t mention the name of the company—but they go on strike. And you say: ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone.’”
NPR: Agreed with many shops in saying that for all its size, there wasn’t a lot substance. “Former President Donald Trump and billionaire X owner Elon Musk said a lot but made little news in a meandering interview marred by a lengthy technical delay on Monday night,” the outlet wrote.
USA Right this moment: Columnist Rex Huppke referred to as it “an unmitigated disaster” and mentioned that “For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid.”
X: Even Musk’s personal platform has a lower than flattering touch upon the large occasion. Requested to offer a abstract, X’s AI assistant “Grok” mentioned the occasion’s “engagement was low.” It additionally famous that those that attended discovered it “lackluster and dominated by oversized egos.”
Musk blamed the technical points on a distributed denial-of-service assault—which works by flooding internet servers with junk site visitors to overwhelm their sources and knock them offline—moderately than his having fired nearly everybody at X who’s technically competent. However as many sources famous, this isn’t the primary time this has occurred.
Politico: “The swirl of posts about technical difficulties echoed Musk’s previous X Live event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who launched his Republican presidential primary campaign on an X live interview with Musk. As appeared to happen with Trump’s event, the site’s livestream portal, which is audio only, crashed.”
Which is an effective reminder that earlier than Musk threw his help behind Trump, he was all in for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid. And see how nicely that went?
