Former President Donald Trump made his return to the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, in a live conversation with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.
Trump is navigating a challenging period in his 2024 presidential campaign with his funding and poll ratings being outstripped by Vice President and Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The chat between Trump and Musk, which began more than 40 minutes late due to technical difficulties on the platform, covered a broad array of topics centered around the 2024 presidential election, including U.S. relations with China, illegal immigration, and climate policy, as well as crowd sizes. Trump made the bizarre and erroneous claim that his crowd sizes were bigger than those of Martin Luther King.
Throughout the conversation, despite having denied just a week or so ago that he was funding the Trump campaign to the tune of 45 Mln dollars a month, Musk voiced his support for Trump, reinforcing the connection between the two influential figures.
Trump’s reappearance on X is notable, as the platform played a significant role in his communication strategy both before and during his term as president and in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021 attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
Twitter suspended his account immediately after January 6, 2021, but Musk reinstated it in late 2022 after he bought the platform.
Since then, despite its reinstatement, Trump had remained largely absent from the platform, instead using his own social media platform ironically named “Truth Social.”
Until now.
Trump sees a need to reengage with his online audience, as his campaign faces new challenges, particularly with Harris dominating the media waves and rising in the polls since she announced last week she will accept the Democratic nomination at the convention later this month.
While Biden had been trailing behind Trump, recent polls are showing Harris now surging, mounting a close competitive race in key battleground states speaking before tens of thousands of voters with enthusiasm and hope at rallies across the country.
Trump’s strategy, however, appears focused on rallying his base through direct communication channels such X, and not doing the hard work of getting on the road to expand his reach to undecided voters who have largely been out of the political loop until now. Trump has not done any rallies in battleground states and has not been on the campaign trail for more than a week.
Trump’s team heavily touted the discussion on X, highlighting the importance they believe it has in mobilizing supporters where he will face no chance of fact-checking or other pushback on his usual barrage of misinformation and disinformation.
Meanwhile, Harris’s campaign downplayed the significance of the discussion, criticizing Trump’s focus on his “narrow, self-serving agenda.”
Musk’s involvement in the conversation now is noteworthy, as the owner of X and a major figure in the tech industry (including producing electric vehicles, about which Trump recently for some reason changed his view to be more favorable), and given his recent shift towards right-leaning political views.
With the November election only 83 days away, Musk’s endorsement of Trump and the proabale infusion of funds into Trump’s lackluster campaign could have significant implications for the 2024 race.