The interview, scheduled for 10am (AEST) on Tuesday, could provide an opportunity for the former president to step into the spotlight at a time when his campaign is seen as faltering.
His Democratic rival for the November 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, has closed on Trump’s lead in the polls and mobilized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies.
The interview on Musk’s X could allow Trump to reach a different audience than the conservative supporters who attend his rallies and watch his interviews on Fox News. However, similar events on the platform have been plagued by technical problems.
“I will be doing some system scaling testing tonight and tomorrow in advance of the call,” Musk wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Entertainment guaranteed! – Elon Musk (@elonmusk) https://t.co/5oR7YLVQr612 August 2024
The interview will be broadcast live on Trump’s official X account, his campaign said. Trump’s access to his @realDonaldTrump account was restored a month after Musk took over X, after being blocked by the platform’s previous owners following his supporters’ attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.
Trump posts frequently on his social media platform Truth Social, which launched in February 2022. Since his access was restored, he has returned to X only once, with an August 2023 post soliciting donations and showing his mugshot from the Fulton County Jail.
Musk could prove an unusual interviewer. The world’s richest person endorsed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has since moved to the right, supporting the Republican following the attempted assassination of Trump in July.
Musk, the head of electric car manufacturer Tesla, also founded a fundraising organization to support Trump’s election campaign. The political action committee is currently under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of the state’s laws on collecting voter information.
Trump, a longtime critic of electric vehicles, changed course after Musk’s support.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be because Elon has supported me very strongly. So I have no other choice,” Trump said at a rally in early August.
Advertisers have left X since Musk bought the company in 2022 and subsequently reduced content moderation, leading to a dramatic increase in hate speech, civil rights groups said.
The businessman has since become embroiled in a number of other controversies. He has falsely accused Biden and the Democratic Party of opening the US borders to illegal immigrants in order to increase the number of potential Democratic voters. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections.
Musk supported an anti-Semitic post on X in November 2023 that said members of the Jewish community were inciting hatred against white people. He defended himself, saying the user was telling “the real truth.”
