File picture of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump, who will be interviewed by Elon Musk on X
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is due to interview Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the X social media network on Tuesday in an event that could inject more surprises into the turbulent U.S. presidential election.
The interview, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern Time today (5.30 a.m. Tuesday IST), could provide the former president an opportunity to seize the limelight at a time when his campaign is seen as sagging.
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His Democratic rival for the November 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, has erased Mr. Trump’s lead in opinion polls and energised Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies.
The interview on Mr. Musk’s social media platform could allow Mr. Trump to reach a different audience than the conservative faithful who attend his rallies and watch his interviews on Fox News. However, similar events on the platform have been plagued by technical problems.
File picture of Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla
| Photo Credit:
Reuters
“Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight and tomorrow in advance of the conversation,” Mr. Musk wrote on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The interview will be hosted live using Mr. Trump’s official X account, his campaign said on Sunday. Mr. Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Mr. Musk’s ownership of X after being suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress by his supporters.
Mr. Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social social media platform, which was launched in February 2022. He has returned to X only once since his access was restored with a post in August 2023 appealing for donations and showing his Fulton County jail mug shot.
Mr. Musk could prove to be an unusual interviewer. The world’s richest person backed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but has tacked rightward since and endorsed the Republican following the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump in July.
Mr. Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla Inc, also started a fundraising organisation to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. The political action committee is now under investigation in Michigan for possible violations of state laws on gathering voter information.
Mr. Trump, a longstanding critic of electric vehicles, shifted gears after Mr. Musk’s endorsement.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice,” Mr. Trump said at an early August rally.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fein, campaigning in support of Ms. Harris, called Mr. Trump a “sellout.”
