Former President Donald Trump spoke with tech billionaire Elon Musk in an overarching, prolonged interview Monday night on X as Vice President Kamala Harris continues avoiding the media since touchdown on the highest of the Democratic ticket for the White Home.
“It is fairly unhappy while you suppose that any individual that does this for a dwelling cannot reply a query or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a really pleasant interview. She’s bought all pleasant interviewers,” Trump mentioned of Harris Monday night throughout his roughly two-hour interview with Musk on X House.
Trump’s feedback come as Harris has averted the media for 22 days. She has snubbed formal press conferences or sit-down interviews, together with for a Time journal cowl story, since she emerged because the DNC’s nominee for the White Home after President Biden dropped out of the race final month.
“She is taken into account extra liberal, by far, than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical-left lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, in a short time you are not going to have a rustic anymore. And he or she’ll return to all of the issues that she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero,” Trump added of Harris.
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Trump’s interview with Musk kicked off after 8:30 p.m. Monday, following a “large” distributed denial-of-service assault on the platform that induced delays, Musk defined on X. Greater than 1 million folks finally listened to the interview in response to the reside tracker all through the dialogue.
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The 2 held a laid again interview, the place Musk prompted Trump with subjects earlier than the forty fifth president was supplied ample time to elaborate on coverage points corresponding to immigration, the assassination try on his life final month, spiraling inflation and shutting the Division of Schooling in favor of states taking the mantle on college programs.
“I need to shut up Division of Schooling, transfer schooling again to the states. … Of the 50 [states], I’d guess that 35 would do nice. And 15 of them, or, you understand, 20 of them, can be nearly as good as Norway. , Norway is taken into account nice,” Trump mentioned, whereas noting left-wing states corresponding to California might battle if he does get rid of the DOE.
The forty fifth president additionally spoke at size with Musk concerning the present state of immigration within the U.S.
“I imagine it is over 20 million folks got here into our nation. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from psychological establishments, or a much bigger model of that’s insane asylums. And plenty of are terrorists. And I will let you know what, they’re coming not simply from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from everywhere in the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Center East,” Trump instructed Musk, who endorsed Trump earlier this yr.
Trump mentioned that regardless of Harris’ latest rhetoric to handle the spiraling migrant disaster on the border, she and Biden have had years to handle migration however “will not do something.”
“She had three and a half years, and by the way in which, they’ve one other 5 months that they’ll do one thing. However they will not do something. It is all speak. She’s incompetent and he is incompetent. And albeit, I feel that she’s extra incompetent than he’s, and that is saying one thing, as a result of he is not too good,” he mentioned.
On the subject of immigration, Trump additionally credited a slide his marketing campaign made displaying immigration stats for saving his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, final month throughout a rally, when shooter Thomas Crooks tried to assassinate him. The forty fifth president seemed over to the slide on immigration knowledge when Crooks opened fireplace, which narrowly saved his life because the place of his head had abruptly modified.
“That slide — unlawful immigration saved my life,” he instructed Musk. “The unbelievable factor is that the chart, I used it lower than 20% of the time. It was only a second.”
“It is all the time to my left, by no means my proper, and it is all the time on the finish of the speech,” Trump added of the place of the slide.
“I will sleep with that chart all the time,” he joked.
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Trump went on to rattle off an inventory of wars and world occasions the U.S. might have averted if Biden weren’t within the Oval Workplace, whereas noting he was robust on nations corresponding to Russia, China and North Korea and is aware of the international locations’ respective leaders “nicely.”
“To start with, the Israeli assault would have by no means occurred. Russia would by no means have attacked Ukraine, and we might don’t have any inflation, and we would not have had the Afghanistan mess, if you happen to consider it nicely … if you happen to take a couple of of these occasions away, and we’ve a special world.”
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He pointed to his tweets again in 2017 when he slammed North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as “little rocket man” as tensions heightened between the 2 nations amid a sequence of North Korea missile and nuclear checks.
“I had that drawback labored out in a short time,” Trump mentioned of North Korea. “It was nasty at first with Rocket Man … [Jong-Un] mentioned he has a purple button on his desk. I mentioned, ‘I’ve a purple button on my desk too, however my purple button is far greater, and my purple button works.’ After which I referred to as him ‘Little Rocket Man.'”
“Anyway, here is the underside line. Impulsively, I bought a name from him, they usually mentioned they need to meet, they needed to satisfy me. And we met … and I bought together with him nice. We have been in no hazard, however President Obama thought we have been gonna find yourself in a warfare, a nuclear warfare, with him,” he mentioned.
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Trump additionally addressed Biden’s exit from the 2024 race, saying it was a Democratic “coup” that pressured Biden to drop out. Biden dropped out of the working final month as issues mounted surrounding his psychological acuity and 81 years of age and Democrats and conventional allies of the celebration referred to as on him to exit the race.
“This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the USA. He did not need to depart, they usually mentioned, ‘We are able to do it the great approach, or we will do it the laborious approach,'” Trump mentioned.
“They simply took him out again behind the shed and principally shot him,” Musk added earlier than Trump slammed Biden as “the worst president in historical past.”
Trump made a return to X, previously Twitter, earlier on Monday after practically a yr of not posting on his once-favored social media platform. Earlier than X bought to Musk in 2022, Trump was suspended from his Twitter account following the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He seldom posted on the platform after Musk reinstated his account, solely sharing his mugshot in August of final yr.
“Are you higher off now than you have been once I was president? Our financial system is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE once more. Make America SAFE once more. Make America GREAT Once more!” Trump posted earlier Monday amid a flurry of marketing campaign adverts.
Forward of his interview with Trump, Musk hyped the interview as one which “needs to be extremely entertaining!” because it “is unscripted with no limits on material.”
“This nation goes down, and these individuals are unhealthy those that we’re working towards. They usually’re liars. They make statements. They do issues which are so unhealthy. They are saying they will make a powerful border. They are saying they have been nice on the border, they usually’ve been the worst in historical past. They are saying they cease crime,” Trump mentioned in the direction of the top of the interview.
“It is so unbelievable.”