Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk will interview Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday (August 12th) on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter).
The interview is scheduled to take place at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
Trump will face off against Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the November 5th election.
According to Reuters, being interviewed on Musk’s social media platform will allow Trump to reach a different audience compared to campaign rallies and Fox News interviews. However, similar activities on this platform have been plagued by technical issues.
Musk wrote on the X platform, “Tonight and tomorrow, I will conduct some system expansion tests before the conversation.”
Trump’s campaign team announced on Sunday that the interview will be live-streamed using Trump’s official X account. Previously, Trump’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended when his team was challenging the results of the 2020 election. After Musk acquired Twitter a month ago, Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account was reinstated. However, since then, Trump has only posted once on the X platform in August 2023. Currently, Trump frequently posts on “Truth Social,” a social media platform he launched in February 2022.
As the world’s richest person, Musk supported Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020, but after the attempted assassination of Trump in July this year, Musk switched his support to the Republican Party.
Musk, the head of electric car company Tesla Inc., has established a fundraising organization to support Trump’s campaign activities.
At a rally in early August, Trump said, “I support electric cars. I must because Elon firmly supports me, so I have no choice.” However, he had previously stated that despite Musk’s endorsement, he still opposes “certain” electric cars.
On July 23rd, during an interview with Fox News, Trump said, “I love Elon… He has never called me and said, ‘Could you stop criticizing electric cars?'”
Trump has consistently criticized Biden’s electric car subsidy policies, and he has stated that if he wins the election, he will end the mandate to promote electric cars.
The Biden administration has been pushing for electric cars through tax breaks and other support measures, aiming to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half within ten years.
By 2030, the Biden administration hopes that half of all new cars sold in the United States will be electric vehicles. Trump has warned that transitioning forcefully to electric cars will “kill off” the American auto industry to the benefit of cheap Chinese cars.
Musk, on the other hand, believes that Trump’s cancellation of electric car subsidies will harm other car manufacturers far more than Tesla.