Donald Trump has suggested he could have prevented the war in Ukraine thanks to his relationship with Vladmir Putin, during an interview with Elon Musk marred by technical issues.
Trump blamed current US President Joe Biden for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Musk did not dispute. Instead, he said: “You’ve made an excellent point.”
“I got along with Putin very well, and he respected me,” Trump said, adding that he often spoke with Putin about Ukraine. He claimed he tried to discourage Putin from
taking action – “I told him, ‘Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. He said ‘No way’, and I said ‘Way’.”
The two-hour interview on Musk’s platform X/Twitter was delayed by approximately 40 minutes due to technical difficulties. Musk blamed the glitch on a distributed denial-of-service attack, where a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down. His claim could not be verified and X didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for details or evidence of the alleged cyberattack.
We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today https://t.co/ymqGBFEJX0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
The pair frequently praised each other, with Musk lauding Trump’s bravery after last month’s assassination attempt and Trump complimenting Musk’s willingness to fire workers demanding better conditions.
“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said. “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say: ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike. And you say: ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone.'”
Musk barely challenged Trump, letting him lead the conversation and not questioning some notably inaccurate statements, such as the notion that other countries were sending criminals from their prisons across the southern U.S. border, or that bacon prices had risen four or five times.
He also insulted his opponent Kamala Harris, referring to her as “third rate”, “incompetent” and “a radical left lunatic”, while also criticising her for not doing an interview “since this whole scam started”. Trump also claimed that Biden dropping out of the race was a “coup”.
However, he added: “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” referencing a picture of Harris on the cover of Time magazine. “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania.”
Our statement on… whatever that was pic.twitter.com/bOZfUu8rbk
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 13, 2024
Harris’ campaign then issued a statement on “whatever that was”, which read: “Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com.
“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”