Former President Donald Trump will sit down for an interview with billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk on Monday, Trump said on social media, marking the Tesla founder’s latest effort to insert himself into the 2024 presidential election.
Here’s a sampling of his involvement in just the last few weeks:
- Shortly after Trump was shot at a June 13 rally in Pennsylvania, Musk announced on X, the social media platform he owns, that he was endorsing the Republican presidential candidate – breaking from tradition that heads of major social media companies don’t endorse presidential candidates.
- Less than a week later, Musk re-posted to his more than 190 million followers on X an AI-altered video of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. The video used a voice-cloning tool to make it sound like Harris was saying things she had never said (for example, that she was running for president because “Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate”), an apparent violation of X’s no “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media” policy. After being posted for nearly two days, Musk clarified that the video was a parody, so it wasn’t a policy violation.
- In late July, X, formerly known as Twitter, temporarily suspended an account, @dudes4harris, that was conducting a fundraising drive for Harris. According to a screenshot posted by the event organizer, the account was suspended for “evading suspension.”
- This week, the Michigan Secretary of State’s office and the North Carolina Board of Elections opened investigations into America PAC, a political action committee backed by Musk. The PAC, which supports Trump, allegedly collected personal data from people in swing states on its website instead of registering them to vote, like the site claimed to do, according to CNBC.
Though Musk boasts a huge following on social media, experts are skeptical about whether he has the potential to sway voters. Cayce Myers, professor of communication at the
Virginia Tech School of Communication, says voters likely don’t look to Musk for election guidance. But that doesn’t mean the platform isn’t helpful to Trump.
“What Musk brings to Trump in the interview is a platform audience that is enormous,” Myers says. “And so what you have with Musk – who’s one of the most followed people on Twitter – if he does this interview and posts it on X, it would be a lot of views and it’s going to outperform typical broadcast or cable interviews.”
The relationship between Trump and Musk has evolved over the years. As recently as 2022, the two men were firing insults at each other, with Musk tweeting that Trump should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” and Trump calling Musk a “bullshit artist.” Historically, Trump has been an outspoken opponent of electric vehicles, saying in March that if he gets elected, “they’re not going to sell those cars.” Since Musk’s endorsement, however, Trump seems to have softened on the idea of EVs.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice,” Trump said at a rally last weekend.
It’s unclear how the new unlikely partnership will impact Trump’s bid for the White House. Whether Musk could sway voters in the Monday interview would likely come down to who his X audience is, Myers says.
“Are they people that are truly undecided voters, that are up in the air about who they’re going to vote for in 2024?” Myers says. “I personally do not think that there are many undecided voters in this election. I think people have made up their mind.”
Myers expects the interview will be a friendly one for Trump – who often laments his treatment in the press – and doesn’t expect Musk to ask tough questions or fact-check the former president. He does, however, think X’s users may step into that role if the interview is posted on the platform. Myers added that Musk conducting a presidential nominee interview is part of the increasing involvement of “hyper wealthy” political donors.
“We’re seeing a kind of an emergence here of a political donor class that is actively engaged in politics in a way that goes beyond just the donations,” he says. “Now they’re entering this space where they are advocating for campaigns and even conducting interviews as if they are the media.”
Casey Burgat, assistant professor and director of the legislative affairs program at George Washington University, agreed that Musk’s interview is more likely to generate buzz and shape conversation than to sway voters.
And while Musk’s involvement could energize Trump’s supporters, Burgat says it could also rev up Harris’.
“Musk’s polarizing reputation means that his involvement might galvanize opposition as much as it motivates his supporters,” he says.
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