By S.A. McCarthy
The Washington Stand
Over 22 million people across the world tuned in on Monday night to listen to a lengthy discussion between former President Donald Trump and tech magnate Elon Musk. Hosted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter and now owned by Musk, the two-hour-long conversation covered a broad range of topics. The live broadcast was delayed by nearly an hour due to a “massive” Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, which Musk said “illustrates there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say.”
The conversation began with Musk asking the 45th president about the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Musk asked, “What was it like for you?” Laughing, Trump replied, “Not pleasant.” He continued, “The bigger miracle is that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter and so it hit me at an angle that was far less destructive than any other angle, so that was the miracle.” Trump added, “For those people that don’t believe in God, I think we’ve all got to start thinking about that. I’m a believer, and now I’m even more of a believer I think.”
“Very sad situation, such a sad situation,” Trump observed of the attempted assassination. Although the former President survived, two Americans attending his rally were injured and another, Corey Comperatore, was killed. “A firefighter, a great gentleman, a great Trumper, he was just a fantastic family man, a fantastic man,” Trump said of Comperatore. He recalled that a wealthy friend of his wanted to help Comperatore’s family after the attack and wrote them a check for $1 million and handed it to Comperatore’s widow. “And, you know, she said, ‘This is really nice, but I’d rather have my husband back,’ which is a nice thing for somebody to say, to be honest. She’s great, the family is great.”
Musk commented, “Your actions after that assassination attempt were inspiring. Instead of shying away from things, instead of ducking down, you were pumping your fist in the air going, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ The president of the United States represents America. And I think that is America, that is strength under fire.”
Trump did share that he intends to return to Butler for another campaign rally. He joked, “I think I’ll probably start by saying, ‘As I was saying…’”
The conversation then turned to illegal immigration. Trump noted his own record while in office and the decrease seen in illegal immigration under his administration. He said, “And then you see what happened with these people, Kamala and Joe, you see what happened? They just let it go. I had ‘Remain in Mexico’ policies. I had all these different policies. That was so good.” He added that incumbent President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “could close up” the border and stem illegal immigration but are refusing to do so. “They could do things right now. It’s horrible,” he said.
“They’re also saying they did a good job on the border. We had the worst numbers in the history of the world — not of our country, there’s never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this,” Trump said of the Biden-Harris administration’s mismanagement of the border crisis. Trump observed that well over 10 million illegal immigrants “came into our country, many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that, insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America, they’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world.”
“We have a defective government. These are defective people, and they’re not people that should be running it,” Trump commented, referring again to the Biden-Harris administration and the ongoing border crisis. “And then she gets up and she tries to pretend like she’s going to do something. She 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. He’s incompetent, and she’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is. And that’s saying something, because he’s not too good.”
Trump noted that crime rates — especially the rate of violent crimes such as sexual assaults, rapes, and murders — have increased drastically due to illegal immigration. “These are rough people. These are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people. And it’s horrible what they do,” he said, pointing out that Harris is largely to blame for the surge in illegal immigration and related crime. “And she’s in charge of it because, you know, now she’s trying to say she had nothing to do with it. And she’s such a liar because she was called the border czar the first day.” He continued, “And she never even went there. She went to one location which had nothing to do with where the problem is. She went in and out because she was getting a lot of pressure but had nothing to do with the problems.”
“People can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say that she wasn’t really involved — this whole thing is horrible. She was totally in charge,” Trump argued, adding that Harris “could have shut the border down without” Biden. “He didn’t know what he was doing anyways. He wouldn’t have even known what happened. You could shut the border down, he wouldn’t even know the difference,” Trump said. He further quipped, “I saw an ad just before I got on the air. I’m walking over here, and I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security. Where’ve you been for three and a half years? For three and a half years?”
Musk commented, “Frankly, I think this is a fundamental existential issue for the United States. If we have another four more years open borders — and it’s going to be even worse with another four more years, it’s going to be even worse than it’s been for the past three and a half years — I’m not sure we’ve got a country.”
Trump replied, “You don’t have a country at that point, Elon. If they get in, you will have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world, not South America only.” He continued, “You know, we think of South America, we think of Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, you know, the four. But it’s not that — it’s everywhere. They’re coming in from everywhere.”
Turning his attention to his political opponent, Harris, Trump said, “What I can tell you is this we cannot have a Democrat. We cannot have her. … She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started. And say what you want, this was a coup. This was a coup of a President of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way.’” Trump further noted, “I’m no fan of his. And he was a horrible president, the worst president in history. And one of the reasons he was so bad — first of all, the Israeli attack would have never happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine. And we’d have no inflation, and we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan mess, if you think of it.”
Musk observed that hostile world leaders and terrorists “obviously have not been at all intimidated by Biden, and they certainly will not be intimidated by Kamala. And you have to really think about in the context of global security.” He noted that Trump’s response to the assassination attempt last month would show other world leaders that “President Trump is like, ‘Don’t mess with me.’”
“These are tough people at the top of their game. And when they see a Kamala or when they see, Biden, Sleepy Joe, they can’t even believe it, they can’t believe this happened,” Trump said of America’s enemies. “All this stuff that you’re seeing now, all the horror — you look at Israel, they’re all waiting for an attack from Iran. Iran would not be attacking, believe me. When I was there — and I say it with respect because I think we would have been good with Iran — I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran, but they knew not to mess around.”
Trump recounted that he would warn the leaders of other nations while he was in office. He told China that if it bought oil from Iran then it would not be allowed to do business with the U.S., which Trump said meant that Hamas and Hezbollah were essentially allowed to go broke. He recalled, “Our country is so bad right now. It’s such a different place. We were respected. Think of it, four years ago, we were so respected to a point where when I said, ‘Don’t buy oil,’ they didn’t buy oil, but they had no money and Israel would have never been attacked. It is zero chance.”
The former President also said that he kept Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. “I said to Vladimir Putin, ‘Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. You do it, it’s gonna be a bad day. You cannot do it.’ And I told him things, what I’d do. and he said, ‘No way.’ And I said, ‘Way.’”
The conversation then turned to the economy and the inflation which has become rampant under the Biden-Harris administration. “But the thing that’s really making them angry is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy,” Trump said. “It’s a disaster with inflation, it doesn’t matter what you make. The inflation will eat you alive if you’re a worker or if you’re just a middle-income person.” He added, “You can’t afford — four years ago, five years ago, people were saving a lot of money. Today, they’re using all their money. And borrowing money just to live is the horrible thing that’s happening, and we’ll end that.”
“A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from. Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never balance when it’s written by the government,” Musk explained. “So if the if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply. And if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation. So really, we need to reduce our government spending.”
“The waste is incredible. Nobody negotiates prices,” Trump agreed, although he also noted that expensive and inefficient “green energy” initiatives have increased the cost of energy, which has in turn increased the cost of living and contributed to inflation. Trump also boasted of reversing deals made by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and saving $1.6 billion on Air Force One improvements alone. “I said to Boeing, ‘Man, you guys must make a lot of money if you can reduce the price by that,’” Trump quipped. He continued, “But now they’re going back to the Biden administration and wanting big cost overruns, you know, because they see these dopey suckers in there and they’ll end up getting some of the money back.”
Musk suggested that Trump, if reelected, form “a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayers’ hard-earned money is spent in a good way.” Trump responded positively to the idea and even hinted that Musk might be the right man to head such a commission. “Well, you’re the greatest cutter,” Trump pointed out. “I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’””
“I mean, those people have been absolutely decimated. And we’re going to bring those people back and help those people. We’ve got to get the prices down,” Trump said, returning to the topic of inflation. “When I look at bacon costing four or five times more than it did a few years ago, when you look at some of the food products and groceries, those people go, they can’t believe it. They used to be able to buy a whole cart. And today, a lot of people just don’t have the money. They go in and they can’t buy anything.”
Trump said that American voters “want the American dream back. More important than anything else.” He added, “It’s like you don’t have that today because the people, they’ve been just stuck, they see incompetent people running our — the Biden thing is very interesting. People just found them to be incompetent.”
“You don’t hear about the American dream anymore, and you’re going to hear about it. People, they need that incentive to go out and, yeah, and do it,” Trump continued. “And they’re going to love their lives. I mean, they’re going to look forward to getting up in the morning and going to a job that they love, not a job … where they have no money, where they literally have no money, and then they end up with violence and lots of other problems.”
“Now we’re going to do some great things. And I learned a lot in the first [administration]. We had a great economy and all of that. We rebuilt. The military did so much,” Trump said. “I think we’re going to really turn things around fast. We have no choice. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a country.”
“And we’re going to have a big election coming up. And I think November 5 will be the most important day in the history of our country,” Trump concluded. “I think that election will be the most important election, and I think it will end up being maybe the most important day in the history of our country, because if we don’t win, I just feel so sorry for everybody.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
