The presidential campaign of Democrat Kamala Harris criticized former President Donald Trump’s interview with entrepreneur Elon Musk, saying the Republican’s campaign is serving “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out to the middle class.”
The New York magnate joined Musk on X Spaces, a live audio chat feature on the social network X, for an interview on Monday night. Millions of people listened to the two, according to the live tracker throughout the conversation.
Musk said in a post after the interview that he would also be happy to host Harris at X Spaces.
In the discussion, Musk gave Trump plenty of time to explain his stance on a range of issues including immigration, his surviving assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, inflation and the idea of eliminating the Department of Education to allow states authority over school systems.
“I want to close the Department of Education, return education to the states… Of the 50 [estados]“I would bet that 35 of them would do very well. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,” Trump said, adding that heavily Democratic states like California could struggle if the department is eliminated.
The vice president’s campaign also lashed out at the Republican after the interview for the political proposals he addressed and criticized the technical difficulties that X Space suffered.
“Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda are a feature, not a flaw, of his campaign, which was on full display for those unfortunate enough to listen in tonight during whatever was happening on X.com,” Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said in a statement.
“Trump’s entire campaign is in the service of people like Elon Musk and himself: self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out to the middle class and who can’t do a live stream in 2024.”
The 2025 project is a controversial initiative organized by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and drafted by several conservatives, some of whom were former officials in the previous Trump administration, Fox News reported.
The idea offers right-wing policy recommendations for the billionaire if he wins the presidency in November, including replacing public service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care and infusing government with Christian values.
The former president has sought to distance himself from the project, which has been criticized as an authoritarian and Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knows nothing about it, that parts of it are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and that its supporters are “radical right.”
Before Musk acquired X in 2022, Trump was suspended from the social network following the Capitol riot in 2021, when the platform still retained its old name. But even after the Tesla CEO reinstated his account, Trump’s only post was his mugshot in August 2023.
“This country is sinking and these people we’re up against are bad people. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do very bad things. They say they’re going to build a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they’re going to stop crime,” the Republican said toward the end of the interview.
“She’s seen as much more liberal than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical left-wing lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, we’re not going to have a country anymore pretty soon. And she’s going to go back to all the things she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, in nothing,” Trump said of Harris.
He also referred to President Joe Biden’s decision in July to suspend his re-election campaign, saying it was a “coup” by Democrats that put pressure on the Democrat to step aside.
The decision by the national executive came amid pressure from his party to drop out of the race over concerns about his mental acuity.
“It was a coup. It was a coup against a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way,’” Trump said.
“They just took him out behind the shed and basically shot him,” Musk replied before Trump slammed Biden as “the worst president ever.”
Continue reading:
- Donald Trump tells Elon Musk it’s good to get along with leaders like Putin
- VIDEO: Donald Trump goes viral by posting again on X
- Trump campaign accuses EU of election interference over Elon Musk ad