Washington DC:

US President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk sat down for their first joint interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity during which the Republican and his adviser were full of praise for each other. The pair talked on various issues including Musk’s role as an advisor to the President and the White House’s stance on his influence.

Trump stressed that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any decisions involving his companies, which the South African-born billionaire seconded saying his primary role was to provide technological support to the President.

Elon Musk told Sean Hannity that he “hasn’t asked the president for anything ever,” seeking to reassure listeners that he would recuse himself from any political decisions that involved his companies. Musk’s companies, especially SpaceX hold many lucrative government contracts and work directly with the US space agency NASA.

Donald Trump also reiterated that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any decision-making saying he not allow him to work on government projects that conflicted with his work for his private companies.

Musk said those worried about his power as an unelected advisor to the president should be more concerned about the thousands of unelected federal employees in the government’s civilian workforce. “If the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then what we live in is a bureaucracy, not a democracy,” he said.

Wearing a t-shirt that read “tech support,” the billionaire stressed that his primary role was to provide technological support to the president.

Trump praised Musk’s efficiency in executing executive orders, saying, “He gets the executive order done. There used to be signed executive orders, but no work got done. He and his genius team make sure they are executed.”

Musk also talked about his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”) and said that with it the Trump administration aims “to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit.”

“I think he’s going to find a trillion dollars,” Trump seconded, saying he believed it would only be a “small shortage of fraud, waste and abuse really in government spending.”

He also reassured voters saying social security would not be affected by the cuts, as he has often repeated, and that abolishing the Department of Education would send school control back to the states.

“Social Security won’t be touched, other than fraud or something – we’re going to find it’s going to be strengthened – but won’t be touched,” Trump said, adding, “Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be … it’s not going to be touchable.”

Hannity also asked the pair about the social media platform, X’s, recent $10m settlement with the president, a question which was dismissed by both Trump and Musk as unimportant.

“I left it up to the lawyers,” Musk said.

“I think it’s very low … I was looking to get much more money than that, so you gave him a discount,” Trump said.

Hannity noted that an assassination attempt was made on the Republican candidate Trump’s life the day Musk endorsed him for the President. The Tesla CEO acknowledged that and praised Trump’s “bravery” in the face of threat. 

“Well, I mean, — this is how you know someone’s true character, because everyone can say they’re brave, but the president was actually shot.  Okay?  Courage under fire.  “Fight, fight, fight,” blood streaming down the face.  That’s true courage.  You can’t fake that.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla., left, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally, Aug. 7, 2024, in Romulus, Mich.
| Photo Credit: AP

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is a “third-rate phoney candidate” and “more incompetent” than her boss President Joe Biden, her Republican rival in the November election, Donald Trump, has said.

In a much-anticipated audio-only interview with billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk on Monday (August 12, 2024) on his social media platform X which was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical difficulties, the 78-year-old former President said, “She is a radical left lunatic,” as he alleged that “she wants to be more Trump than Trump”.

Launching a scathing attack on the 59-year-old U.S. Vice President, Mr. Trump described Ms. Harris as a “third-rate phoney candidate.” He reiterated his allegation that Mr. Biden being replaced by Harris as a presidential candidate of the Democratic party was a coup.

Mr. Musk agreed with the former President and said, “Her behaviour is far left.” “She (Ms. Harris) had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk,” Mr. Trump said.

“She’s incompetent, and he (Mr. Biden) is incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something because he’s not too good,” he said.

Mr. Trump would face Ms. Harris in the general elections on November 5.

He accused Ms. Harris of having failed miserably on border security as hundreds and thousands of people entered the country illegally.

Asserting that he is in favour of legal immigration, Mr. Trump said it is illegal immigration that he is against.

“She is such a liar,” Mr. Trump alleged on X, previously known as Twitter, on the day when he returned to the social media platform.

Over a million people listened to the much-awaited audio-only conversation, which started more than 40 minutes late because of technical issues.

“There appears to be a massive DDOS ( distributed denial-of-service) attack on X. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later,” Mr. Musk said in a post on X.

During the interview, both Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump agreed that the crime rate has increased in the U.S. because of the open border policy of the Biden-Harris Administration.

“We’re gonna have the largest deportation in the history of this country. And we have no choice,” said the former President.

Responding to a question from Mr. Musk, Mr. Trump also slammed Mr. Biden’s foreign policy and applauded Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I got along well with them,” he said, claiming there would have been no war if he was the president of the United States.

Meanwhile, Mr. Musk stressed that people respond to strength and not weakness and said, “We have some really bad people… we have some really bad people, and I say they are more dangerous than Russia and China.” The biggest threat, he said, is not climate change but nuclear warming.

The conversation between Trump and Musk started with the failed assassination attempt on the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.

“It’s very much, I say, an act of God. It’s a miracle that it happened,” Mr. Trump said.

Commenting on the country’s economy, he said the U.S. is having the worst inflation in 100 years. Mr. Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of the worsening of the U.S. economy.

“We need to reduce our government spending. … We need, like a government efficiency commission,” Mr. Musk said.

Mr. Trump also told Mr. Musk, the 53-year-old CEO of Tesla, that he was an “interesting character”.

During the conversation, Trump described China as a primary competitor in Artificial Intelligence and announced that he would close down the Department of Education and move them to the states. In this, he said he would need Mr. Musk’s help.

Mr. Trump, who has 88.8 million followers on X, had 10 posts on the social media platform, each of which has been viewed millions of times.

Some of his posts had 34 million impressions.

His first post, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!” had 25 million impressions.