Two men and a story that could end badly for both
Opinion
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s ‘conversation’ this week highlights that the turning of the political tide could defeat the former’s presidential ambitions while damaging the other’s business interests.
Did two stranger people ever sit down for a two-hour conversation in which they relentlessly agreed with each other on almost everything?
The only thing any objective viewer to Monday night’s performance could reasonably disagree over is whether the more unhinged of the two was Donald Trump or Elon Musk.
Both of course have intimate relationships with the media.
Trump exploited unquestioning news channels such as Fox to become an unlikely and ultimately unsuccessful president of the US. He is now facing an uphill struggle to repeat the trick.
Earlier this month, a team of reporters and editors from NPR fact-checked Trump’s Mar-a-Lago press conference and said they found no less than 162 “lies and distortions”.
Picking fights
As for Musk, he notoriously destroyed billions of dollars of value by turning Twitter into X, sacking 80% of staff, including those responsible for safeguarding issues such as the accuracy of tweets, thereby helping to destroy the company’s credibility with users and advertisers.
In 2022, Musk allowed Trump back on Twitter after he had been kicked off in January 2021 for his role in the attempted insurrection earlier that month.
In recent days, Musk, who is helping to fund the Trump campaign for re-election, has been picking online fights with all and sundry, including UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, following extreme right-wing riots.
Musk accused Starmer of suppressing free speech and running a two-tier police service. He then went on to make himself appear totally ludicrous by claiming that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, just as thousands of peaceful demonstrators reclaimed the streets from the disappearing ranks of rioters. Musk even managed to upset Scotland’s former first Minister Humza Yousaf by calling him a “racist” and “scumbag”.
Misleading claims
As for the Trump-Musk discussion, in which Musk asked a series of Trump-friendly questions, it is difficult to know where to start.
Trump claimed falsely that his new vigorous opponent for the presidency, Kamala Harris, as vice-president had the authority to close the border with Mexico.
She had no such authority and, anyway, president Trump had promised a wall and failed to build one. Crossings are down under the Biden-Harris administration and bipartisan legislation to crack down on illegal crossings was torpedoed by Trump because it might make the Democrats look good.
Trump also suggested that climate change might not be such a bad idea, because rising sea levels would create more beachside properties.
The Musk role in the “conversation” was mainly to ask a few gentle questions and nod sagely at almost everything Trump said.
He did, however, express one opinion of his own that “America is at a fork in the road and you [Trump] are the path to prosperity and Kamala is the opposite” — apparently forgetting that the US economy has been doing rather well under Biden.
Musk must have also forgotten previous remarks made about the 78-year-old Trump that, at 82 by the end of a second term, he was too old to be CEO of anything, let alone the US.
An odd transaction
The two men are now inevitably bound at the hip. Trump used to be very sceptical about electric cars. Now that Musk is helping to bankroll his campaign, Trump says — with almost touching naivety — he will now have to support electric cars, as if such a transaction were the most normal thing in the world.
Before that conversation, the EU commissioner for internal markets, Thierry Breton, warned on X that Musk would have to comply with EU law, such as the 2022 Digital Services Act that includes cracking down on disinformation.
A Trump spokesman told the EU to mind its own business, while Musk replied with a meme saying: “Fuck your own face.”
There is more, much more, and doubtless the list of lies, disinformation and outright nonsense will be added to by the hour.
But where does all of this leave Trump, Musk and the media?
A business dilemma
Musk now has a very serious business problem not just with X but also his other companies such as Tesla.
Not everyone likes to buy products from someone who is stridently committed to what many will see as an extreme political position. Supporters of Harris in the market for an electric vehicle may just decide to take their business elsewhere.
It’s more serious with the San Francisco-based Twitter, as most people still call it. Many of the liberals on the site will simply melt away, while those who stay to fight will remain truculent opponents of Musk.
Many mainstream advertisers have already abandoned the site; others that do not want to be associated with a convicted felon in shape of Trump may soon follow.
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Musk has another fundamental problem that is not good for business: being associated with a loser.
Trump would probably have beaten Biden on the grounds of the latter’s perceived frailty, whether that judgement was fair or not.
All the signs are that Trump has little clue about how to compete against a younger, obviously much smarter and accomplished woman and her clever pick for vice-president, the authentically folksy Tim Walz. Harris and Walz are currently ahead in crucial swing stares and marginally ahead nationally.
Turning of the tide
The crowds, the momentum and the money are all heading in the direction of the Harris-Walz campaign and it is no longer fanciful to predict a Democrat landslide in November as Trump becomes more desperate.
Meanwhile, the US media, which has too often in the past given Trump an easy ride, are at last turning on him, his age and his increasingly obvious declining powers.
Apart from the vigorous fact-checking and the many bizarre statements, journalists noted this week that during the conversation with Musk, Trump appeared to be slurring his words.
Watch increasingly for the arguments that killed off Biden’s hopes for a second term being applied to Trump: you are too old to be returned to the White House.
They are indeed weird, but that word is inadequate for the recent performances of Trump and Musk.
Surely “unhinged” fits the bill better?
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — read his column here.