Trump-Musk interview live: Trump likens Harris to Melania in tech-plagued X interview

Donald Trump heaped praise on the controversial leaders of Russia, China and North Korea calling them “top of their game” in his rambling interview with Elon Musk.

“Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un are at the top of their game,” he said.

The former president claimed the dictators have a “different form of love” for their nations before regaling a wild apparent conversation he claims he once had with Putin.

“I got along with Putin very well, and he respected me. We would talk about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. But I told him don’t do it,” he claimed.

“I said to Vladimir Putin, ‘Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. If you do it, it’s going to be a bad day. You cannot do it.’ And I told him what I’d do. And he said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’” Trump said.

Elon Musk has offered to also interview Kamala Harris on his X Spaces – after he held a rambling, two-hour-plus-long chat with Donald Trump on Monday night.

As Trump and Musk’s discussion got underway on Monday night on X, the former president’s voice raised immediate questions among listeners, many of whom said they thought it sounded like he was speaking with a distinct lisp.

The live one-on-one between the former president Trump — who last week floated “at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies” during a 64-minute press conference at his Florida country club — and X boss Musk — whose false or misleading claims about the 2024 election have amassed more than 1bn views on the social media site — was derailed by technical glitches for some 40 minutes before finally starting.

Musk had said beforehand that the chat would give people an opportunity to “get a feel for what Donald Trump is like in a conversation.”

But listeners were immediately distracted by Trump’s odd-sounding voice.

“Did Trump pause campaign rallies because of this massive lisp he has on this Twitter interview with Elon?” one X user posted.

“Is it just me….. What is wrong with trumps voice??” another wrote. “Sound like he has a lisp??”

Donald Trump bizarrely likened his Democratic presidential rival Kamala Harris to his wife Melania Trump during his highly-anticipated interview with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on X Spaces on Monday night, an event that suffered a 40-minute derailment thanks to technical glitches, recalling Musk’s disastrous attempt to launch Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign in May 2023.

The Q&A was due to be broadcast on X’s live audio platform at 8pm ET last night but had to be delayed because many listeners reported that they were unable to gain access, which Musk later blamed on a server attack.

When the conversation finally got underway, Trump commented that Harris looked “beautiful” on the new cover of Time magazine, unveiled yesterday with the headline “Her Time”.

“She looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” the Republican told Musk.

“She didn’t look like Kamala but, of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that.”

Here’s Michelle Del Rey on that cover.

Businesswoman Alicia Powers said she was left feeling “violated” after a Secret Service agent was filmed covering up one of the salon’s security cameras with tape, broke into the business and allegedly allowed people to use the bathroom without her permission.

The incident took place on July 27 when the vice president was speaking at a fundraiser at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, Massachusetts – Harris’s first major in-person fundraiser since she launched her presidential campaign. Organizers said that Harris raked in over $1.4m for her campaign from the event.

The performing arts space is located behind Powers’ Four One Three salon.

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organisations covered them avidly.

The Harris campaign responded to Donald Trump’s interview with a statement saying that his “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.”

“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.”

Donald Trump insulted Kamala Harris several times, referring to her as “third rate”, “incompetent” and “a radical left lunatic”, but then praised her looks.

“She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” Trump said about 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,” he added, referring to his wife Melania Trump.

He also expressed anger that Ms Harris had been swapped in for Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket.

President Joe Biden is zeroing in on the policy goals closest to his heart now that he’s no longer seeking a second term and will visit New Orleans on Tuesday to promote his administration’s “moonshot” initiative aiming at dramatically reducing cancer deaths.

The president and first lady Jill Biden will tour medical facilities and then deliver remarks at Tulane University on how the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health “is fast-tracking progress in how we prevent, treat, and detect cancer”, the White House says. That agency is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

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