Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign is criticizing former President Trump's interview with billionaire Elon Musk, saying the Trump campaign is serving “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out to the middle class.”
Trump joined Musk on X Spaces, a live audio chat feature on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for an interview Monday night, though it got off to a shaky start due to technical difficulties. Millions of people eventually listened to the interview, according to the live tracker throughout the discussion.
Musk said in a post after the interview that he would also be happy to host Harris at X Spaces.
During Monday's interview, Musk gave Trump plenty of time to explain his stance on a number of issues including immigration, the assassination attempt he survived at a campaign rally last month, inflation and the idea of eliminating the Department of Education to allow states authority over school systems.
TRUMP TALKS WITH MUSK IN LONG, WIDE-RANGING INTERVIEW AS HARRIS CONTINUES TO Snub The Media
Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign is criticizing former President Trump's interview with billionaire Elon Musk. (Getty Images)
“I want to close the Department of Education, return education to the states… Of the 50 [states]”I bet 35 of them would do very well. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,” Trump said, adding that deeply Democratic states like California could struggle if the department is eliminated.
Harris' campaign attacked Trump after the interview for the former president's policy proposals and criticized the technical difficulties faced by X Space.
“Donald Trump’s extremism and his dangerous Project 2025 agenda are a feature, not a flaw, of his campaign, which was on full display for those unfortunate enough to listen in tonight during whatever was happening on X.com,” Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said in a statement. “Trump’s entire campaign is in service to people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out to the middle class and can’t do a live stream in the year 2024.”
The 2025 Project is a controversial initiative organized by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and drafted by several conservatives, including some former Trump administration officials.
X MERGES AFTER TRUMP AND MUSK 'SPACE' INTERVIEW IMMEDIATELY LEAKS AWAY
Trump joined Musk on X Spaces, a live audio chat feature on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for an interview Monday night. (Getty Images)
The initiative offers right-wing policy recommendations for Trump if he wins the presidency, including replacing public service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care, and infusing government with Christian values.
Trump has sought distance oneself from the initiative, which has been criticised as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knows nothing about it, that parts of it are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and that its supporters are on the “radical right”.
Monday marked Trump's return to X after nearly a year of not posting on the social media platform, posting a series of campaign ads ahead of the interview with Musk.
Before Musk bought X in 2022, Trump was suspended from the platform following the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, when the platform was still known as Twitter. But even after Musk reinstated his account, Trump's only post was one in which he shared his mugshot in August of last year.
Harris' campaign said Trump's campaign is “serving people like Elon Musk and himself: self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out to the middle class.” (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
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“This country is going down the drain and these people we're up against are bad people. And they're liars. They make statements. They do very bad things. They say they're going to build a strong border. They say they've been great on the border and they've been the worst in history. They say they're going to stop crime,” Trump said toward the end of the interview.
Trump also addressed President Biden's decision last month to suspend his re-election campaign, saying it was a Democratic “coup” that put pressure on the president to step aside. Biden's decision came amid pressure from Democrats to drop out of the race over concerns about his mental acuity.
“It was a coup. It was a coup against a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave and they said, 'We can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way,'” Trump said.
“They just took him out behind the shed and basically shot him,” Musk replied before Trump slammed Biden as “the worst president ever.”
Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.
