AP
Former president Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed on social media Monday night by billionaire Elon Musk. The interview on X, the platform owned by Musk, is set to air on Trump’s account. Vice President Kamala Harris has no public events scheduled Monday. Her office said she will record remarks for a convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
"This is unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!" Musk, the billionaire CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, wrote in a Sunday X post. The event is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET and will be streamed on X Spaces
Ahead of the event, Musk planned to perform "some system scaling tests" to gauge the X platform's streaming capabilities ahead of the event with Trump.
The tests are intended to prevent a repeat of the disastrous May 2023 live launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, which was held on the social media platform. The webcast glitches derailed the highly-anticipated event.
The Trump interview is Musk's latest high profile foray into the 2024 presidential race.
Earlier this year, Musk created the America PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee that Musk reportedly had planned to bankroll with as much as $45 million a month. Musk later denied that he ever intended to give that much.
The PAC set out to mobilize 800,000 voters for Trump in critical swing states. But after a rocky start and high turnover, CNBC reported that the PAC is facing questions from state election officials about it collects and uses voters' personal information.
Live conversation on 𝕏 with @realDonaldTrump & me at 8pm ET tomorrow
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024
While the fate of the PAC is unclear, the conversation Monday night could provide a welcome boost for Trump at a crucial moment for the Republican presidential nominee.
Just three weeks after Vice President Kamala Harris' surprise entry into the race, the Democrat has erased Trump's polling lead and shifted the momentum of a contest that had looked, at one point, like it was Trump's to lose.
A buzzy, news-making event with Musk could help to reinvigorate Trump's base voters.
It could also go the other way, too. Trump and Musk are both polarizing figures who have a complicated relationship with one another and with politics.
As recently as 2022, Musk and Trump were public enemies, trading insults on social media and at political rallies.
"I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset," Musk wrote on social media in July 2022.
Two years later, the two appear to have buried the hatchet.
Musk endorsed Trump in July, within hours of an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally that left the former president with a minor bullet wound on his ear and killed an audience member.
In turn, Trump appears to have changed his tune on Musk. He has even softened his critiques of electric vehicles.
"I love Elon. He's great," Trump said at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville last month. "He endorsed me, and great endorsement and everything else. But not everybody has to have an electric car."
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