It doesn’t seem like Rex Huppke is the most objective observer, but in his column in USA Today he made me laugh by writing that Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk was a disaster that made the disgraced ex-president sound “like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.” The whole thing went even worse than Ron DeSantis’s infamous glitchy campaign launch on X/Twitter.
As with DeSantis’s debacle, things got started with technical problems, in this case causing a delay of 40 minutes. Musk made the highly unsubstantiated and quickly debunked claim that he was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack.
When Trump finally made an appearance, he slurred his words and spoke with an unfamiliar lisp, inviting the Daffy Duck comparison.
While political pundits were busy noting down Trump’s claims and number of attacks aimed at Harris and Biden, many couldn’t help but notice that the 78-year-old candidate was speaking with a slight lisp. Musk had said the chat was for people to “get a vibe for how Donald Trump talks.” But, instead, people were more tuned in to Trump’s funny-sounding voice.
Was his mouth numb from a dental visit? Was he having a stroke? These are the questions listeners focused on, which might not be so bad considering what he was actually saying. For example, he promised to shutter the Department of Education if elected to a second term, said President Joe Biden has “a stupid face,” and complimented Musk for firing employees who try to unionize. Then he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as being “on top of their game.”
As for the racism, it was both familiar and off the charts. Just as he did in his famous 2015 press conference announcing his first campaign for president, Trump accused foreign leaders of emptying their prisons and sending murderers to the United States. Rather than providing evidence, he simply stated it’s what he would do if he were a foreign leader and insisted that Musk would do the same thing if in a position to do so. He backed this up by once again promising the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, but his plan is indiscriminate and without respect to criminal records.
This rhetoric is supposed to help him win the election, but I don’t think it’s the most effective way to utilize concern about immigration for political advantage, and most people were less focused on what he was saying than how he was saying it. That’s even more true in the aftermath, as almost all the post-interview analysis focuses heavily on Trump’s lisp and slurring.
At the conclusion of the interview, Musk asked the listeners, which peaked at only 1.3 million, to vote for Trump. And that seems to be the purpose for which Musk bought Twitter in the first place. The two are awfully chummy for social media competitors, and Trump’s Truth Social stock tanked after he resumed posting on X/Twitter on Monday. It has continued to drop on Tuesday. Nothing could be worse for Truth Social than Trump going back to using Twitter, but he knows he has to win to stay out of prison and that comes before pleasing investors or protecting his wealth.
Did his appearance on X/Twitter help the cause of winning?
Based on the mocking response and new concerns about his health, I don’t think so. It was a double-loss.
