00:00Welcome back. Former US president and current Republican hopeful Donald Trump
00:05was supposed to be interviewed tonight by Elon Musk on X, but technical issues
00:09have forced a change of plans. Many people haven't been able to get into the
00:13chat and listen to the conversation. Journalist Nick Harper is following this
00:17story for us from Washington. Nick, I'm just on X looking at people's comments.
00:22Some people have been waiting for 15-20 minutes trying to get in. I know that you
00:27were not able to get in either. Elon Musk has tweeted about what went wrong.
00:32What is he saying? Yeah, the idea was that I was meant to come on now and tell
00:37you about everything I'd heard in the last 35 minutes. That has not been the
00:41case. Elon Musk has said there appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Now
00:47that's a type of cyber attack where there are actors who are trying to flood
00:51servers to disrupt or interrupt the ability for people to get on to that
00:57site. He's gone on to say that X is working to shut it down. Worst case we
01:01proceed with a smaller group of live listeners and post the conversation
01:05later. He has since updated to say that he plans to have a smaller number of
01:09concurrent listeners at 8.30 Eastern and then post the unedited audio
01:14immediately afterwards. I just tried to get on and I actually was able to. There
01:19was just music in the background. There was no conversation. In theory things
01:24are up and running but the problem is over the last 30-35 minutes people like
01:29myself have been logging in to try and listen. I was given a screen that at one
01:33point said details not available. At another point it said this space is not
01:37available and there was an emoji of a monkey holding its head in its hands. It
01:42is disastrous for X, for Donald Trump. The hope was that everyone would be able
01:46to listen live. Remember of course that something like this went spectacularly
01:50wrong just over a year ago in May 2023 where Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor,
01:56announcing his presidential bid on X was trying to have that conversation with
02:01Elon Musk. It was beset by technical issues like the type we've seen this
02:05evening. Many people simply not able to log on. We'll have to wait and see now
02:09whether people can get on and whether that conversation gets underway. Nick, I'm
02:14just seeing a lot of people posting that very image, the emoji of a monkey
02:18holding its head that you just described. Some people have also said
02:22just over 200,000 are listening in when it flashes up and then disables again. So
02:29definitely still beset by technical problems. Let's talk a little bit about
02:34the why. Why had Elon Musk arranged this interview? The two men had certainly not
02:40always seen eye to eye. In fact they publicly exchanged jabs at one point not
02:46that long ago. But Elon Musk now seems to be firmly in Donald Trump's camp. What
02:51led to this change? Yeah really not that long ago, only in the last year and a
02:57half, very publicly attacking one another on X and Trump's social media platform
03:03Truth Social. And remember that Elon Musk was a Democrat until recent times when
03:08he says that he became disillusioned with the Biden administration. There was
03:12also a very public snub in 2021 when he was not invited to the White House
03:17electric vehicle event, a big conference for electric vehicle makers. Obviously he
03:22is the owner of Tesla but was not invited. Then he moved his allegiance to
03:27Ron DeSantis and tried to host that launch event before saying that he was
03:31backing publicly Donald Trump just over a couple of weeks ago after that
03:35assassination attempt. He said that he would back Donald Trump and endorse him.
03:39He's now trying to get voters rallying around Donald Trump, trying to fundraise
03:43for him. And remember ideologically they are very much aligned. They both feel
03:48that there was election fraud in the 2020 election. They both battle against
03:53big government, battle against the media. So there are certain things that they
03:57certainly agree on, things that potentially could be discussed if this
04:01interview gets underway during the course of this evening. Nick thank you so
04:05much for that and I know that we're all trying to find out what is being
04:08said in this interview but it looks like not too many people have been
04:12successful. Thank you so much Nick. Now let's talk some more about Elon Musk's
04:17endorsement of Donald Trump and his efforts to get the former president
04:20reelected. Dana Matteoli is a Wall Street Journal reporter. She co-authored an
04:26article today for her paper titled inside Elon Musk's hands-on push to win
04:30800,000 voters for Trump. She's also the author of The Everything War, Amazon's
04:36ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power. Dana thank you
04:40so much for making time for us tonight. Thank you for having me. Dana this is
04:45Elon Musk's first really overt step into politics. He has been heavily involved in
04:52this super PAC. How has it been going? Yeah so he started this super PAC back
04:59in the spring is when he started mobilizing and meeting with vendors and
05:03political consultants and it followed you know this break from the Democratic
05:07Party that we've been reporting about with his frustration with the Biden
05:10administration but also this ideological shift that we've seen him undergone
05:14undergo and you know they had hired vendors with the stated goal of getting
05:20800,000 low propensity voters in swing states to show up for Donald Trump and
05:24to register new voters and you know they had started down that path but more
05:28recently just a few weeks ago Elon signed off on firing many of the vendors
05:33which means that they've had a bunch of setbacks and you know stumbles as it
05:38relates to obtaining those goals. I wanted to ask you Dana I was just
05:42talking to our journalist Nick Harper about this a few years ago it was more
05:47complex to describe where Elon Musk stood politically whether he was
05:53libertarian he was independent what happened between him and the Democrats
05:58because we have now seen him heavily promoting Trump on X and attacking
06:02Kamala Harris what brought us to this point? Yeah that's right so he has said
06:09that up until the last few years he exclusively voted Democrat you know if
06:14you think about the mission of some of his companies they're very much about
06:17not using fossil fuels about being more environmentally sustainable really
06:21emissions aligns more with the Democratic Party but what we've seen is
06:25that you know the Biden administration shunned Elon from the White House the
06:30UAW the United Auto Workers Union basically had an ultimatum of sorts in
06:35place that he could not be mentioned he could not be invited to White House
06:39events and instead they were to focus on US auto companies with unions even
06:47though they had a much smaller share of EV market share and that really did you
06:51know create some tension between Elon and the Biden administration and then
06:56you know as he accumulated more and more wealth he's the richest person in the
06:59world more progressive parts of the Democratic wing have villainized him in
07:03some ways have called you know made him the poster boy for corporate greed or
07:07not paying the fair share of taxes so it was this confluence of events and the
07:12Democrats that really created this opening for him to now move more toward
07:16the Republicans and you know we saw him come out with this endorsement for
07:20Donald Trump after the the assassination attempt but in the
07:23background of all of that he's been meeting with GOP donors and talking
07:27about the state of the country and how to get Donald Trump reelected and that
07:31that culminated with this America pack which is sort of historic in terms of
07:36what it's trying to do and who is involved I remember Dana I was co-hosting
07:41a live special on the night that there was an assassination attempt on on
07:45Donald Trump and I remember that tweet by by Elon Musk or a post that that
07:51took me aback a bit because he said you know he was glad that he was alive and
07:55posted that that that picture of course with Donald Trump rising up you know
08:01with a fist pump and saying and this is why I endorse him and I thought that was
08:05the first time I'd seen it put so openly tell me what are some of the benefits
08:10someone like Elon Musk or other big tech companies behind this super PAC might
08:15gain if we do end up seeing a second Trump presidency well first of all I
08:21think the Trump administration has a lot to gain from their support I mean
08:24there's a lot of money being dedicated from this one super PAC to his campaign
08:28and to get out the vote efforts for the campaign and door-knocking and signing
08:32up voters and getting people to register so that's one thing and then someone
08:36like Elon Musk who's got a giant microphone first of all he's someone in
08:40the business community that's you know kind of iconic he's this big titan of
08:44industry he oversees six different companies many of them very successful
08:48on top of that he owns he bought Twitter he owned is the giant the biggest
08:54microphone that you could have as it relates to social media so for someone
08:58like that to own the platform and then be endorsing you and and you know having
09:02a lot of pro Donald Trump rhetoric on the platform I think that's also very
09:06important as it relates to what these companies could get from a Trump
09:10presidency you know there's been a sense when we speak to VCs venture capital
09:14capitalists and CEOs in the valley that they've been frustrated by the antitrust
09:19environment under under the Biden administration as it relates to tech
09:22there have been a lot of challenged mergers they are frustrated by the way
09:26that cryptocurrency has been handled by the Biden administration it's not viewed
09:30as cryptocurrency friendly whereas Trump has made that a big selling point of a
09:35second administration and there are other things that they're worried about
09:38in Democratic hands like artificial intelligence so you could see that there
09:42could be ways where they want to influence potential policy as relates to
09:47big tech innovation artificial intelligence and the like hmm tell me of
09:53course as you mentioned he has an extremely powerful microphone I mean he
09:57has hundred and ninety three million followers on X how will musks shift to
10:05the Republican mindset or at least his very public endorsement of Donald Trump
10:11we can't really tell where he might be ideologically fully how might that
10:18influence his followers when it's time to cast their vote in this year's
10:21election what demographic does this work on well I would say that Elon is sort of
10:27singular in terms of his fan base his shareholders are sort of rabid about him
10:32and his leadership and he's got an army of followers that really look up to him
10:37and you know listen to every word he says so I think he is very influential
10:41in those communities and then also having such a big-name CEO come out and
10:46support of Donald Trump where you know the last election cycle CEOs really
10:50didn't do that they were trying to distance themselves from the Trump
10:52campaign because of different things that had happened it emboldens a lot of
10:58other people to come out and show their support too and we've seen that in
11:02Silicon Valley in particular Dana thank you so much for that thanks for your
11:07time and your expertise tonight thanks for having me
11:11Dana Mattioli is a Wall Street Journal reporter and she joined us from Brooklyn
11:15New York
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