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What to watch on the campaign trail today
- Former President Donald Trump joined a virtual interview with Elon Musk on X, after a 40-minute technical delay while crypto scams tried to hijack the moment on YouTube. Their hourslong discussion sounded largely like a Trump rally, focused on immigration, technology and the economy.
- The platform had similar technical problems last year when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign. Trump at the time mocked his then-GOP rival over the flubbed launch, something the Harris-Walz campaign highlighted this evening.
- Ahead of his scheduled appearance on X, Trump posted on the platform for the second time since his account was reinstated in 2022, followed by several more posts. Trump was kicked off X, then known as Twitter, after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Harris-Walz campaign bashes Trump and Musk after interview on X
In response to Trump's conversation with Musk tonight, the Harris-Walz campaign referred to them as "self-obsessed rich guys."
“Donald Trump’s 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.com," campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement.
"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."
Trump mentions dangerous people as migrants nearly 2 dozen times
Trump mentioned dangerous people coming to the U.S. 22 separate times during tonight's two-hour conversation with Musk.
Some of those remarks included debunked claims about immigration.
Trump-Musk conversation ends
Trump and Musk ended their conversation at 10:47 p.m. ET.
They spoke on X for 2 hours and 5 minutes.
Trump-Musk conversation passes two-hour mark
Trump and Musk are now in the third hour of their discussion.
The event, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., started at 8:41 p.m. ET.
Violent crime down in first half of 2024, new survey finds
A survey conducted by the Major Cities Chiefs Association has found that violent crime decreased during the first six months of this year, compared to the same period in 2023.
Murders and willful manslaughter, for example, declined by 17%, and there were also decreases in rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, the survey said.
Speaking about the findings, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the data "offers yet another indicator of a substantial reduction in violent crime in major cities across the country."
Trump often attacks Democrats, including Harris, over their handling of violent crime. He suggested during tonight's conversation with Musk and at his rally in Bozeman, Montana, on Friday that there are "rising crime rates" in the U.S.
Harris campaign calls Musk 'a lackey for Team MAGA' in fundraising appeal
The Harris campaign made a fundraising appeal amid Trump's interview with Musk on X tonight, taking aim at Musk by calling him "a lackey for Team MAGA."
"It’s not enough that Musk has pledged to donate millions of dollars to help reelect Trump," the fundraising email said. "He’s using his purchased platform — one of the largest social media sites in the world — to spread Trump’s unhinged and hateful agenda to millions of users."
The email asserts that Harris and Walz are "not beholden to billionaires like Elon" in its drive for donations.
Musk claimed a DDoS attack was to blame for livestream glitches. Experts doubt it.
Musk claimed that the livestream’s outage was “a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down.”
A DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attack, is a low-skilled hacker technique that slows or fully stops an internet service by overwhelming it with web traffic. Such tactics are nearly impossible to disprove, but the history of the internet is rife with false claims of DDoS attacks that were actually just websites unready for a large influx of visitors. Musk offered no evidence of an attack or how he might be able to shut down an attack from millions of different sources.
An expert in volumetric DDoS attacks, the most common type of DDoS, which entails simply directing a massive amount of fake traffic at a computer network, said a scan of recent internet traffic showed no signs of an attack aimed at X, which seemed to otherwise work normally. The expert asked to not be named for fear of retaliation.
Alp Toker, the director of Netblocks, a company that tracks internet traffic, said on X, “Any sufficiently overloaded server is indistinguishable from a DDoS.”
A spokesperson for Cloudflare, a web services company known for DDoS protection, said it was “[i]mpossible for us to know” whether X had been the victim of such an attack, “as they do not use us to protect their Spaces product.”
'The greatest cutter': Trump praises Musk over Tesla firings
Trump, who is courting the union vote, praised Musk for firing workers, referring to him as "the greatest cutter" in an apparent reference to the dismissal of workers during organizing efforts.
"I mean, I look at what you do," Trump said.
"I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, 'That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone,' and you are the greatest," Trump added.
Trump appeared to be referring to the termination of at least 30 Tesla workers. Workers from the electric car company had filed a complaint last year with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Tesla of retaliation amid a unionizing drive.
Trump-Musk conversation moves into second hour
It has now been over an hour since Trump and Musk began their conversation, after a 40-minute delay.
The event started at 8:41 p.m. ET.
Trump calls Tesla 'a great product' but says not everyone needs an EV
Trump, who has been largely critical of electric vehicles, told Musk, Tesla's CEO, that he makes a "great product."
"You do make a great product. I have to say, I have to be honest with you. That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details, but your product is incredible," Trump said.
Trump made similar remarks at a rally on Aug. 3 when he mentioned Musk's endorsement of him for president.