Harris Campaign Fires Back at Tech-Troubled Trump-Musk X Interview: “Self-Obsessed Rich Guys”

Vice President Kamala Harris‘ campaign team is taking aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk after their live-streamed X interview, claiming the Republican hopeful’s agenda is for “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class.”

On Monday, Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and later renamed it X, had a conversation with former president Trump on the platform — an interview that was marred by technical difficulties that got off to an awkward start after a 40-minute-plus delay — where Trump spoke on a myriad of his key talking points, including immigration, censorship, trade and the assassination attempt against him.

In between a series of attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate, where he called Harris “incompetent” and her campaign “a scam,” Trump, bizarrely, called Harris “beautiful” on the cover of Time magazine and likened her to his wife Melania. He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as being at the “top of their game.” As of 6 a.m. PT on Tuesday when this story published, the post sharing the interview on Trump’s X account had more than 165 million views.

Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello is now firing back on behalf of the Vice President following the interview, saying 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.”

“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,” he added.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s latest cover story focuses on the L.A. liberal moguls who are coming after Musk and the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club this election. A clash has ensued over just who each side wants in the White House this November, as one studio executive succinctly summed up Hollywood’s new battle cry: “Fuck these Trump-loving techies.”

Musk is, this election, backing Trump. The Space X owner had pledged to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign, although he later denied making that pledge. He is now claiming to be channeling his money into his own pro-Trump political action committee, AmericaPAC — and he’s not the only one getting the checkbook out for Trump 2024.

Before the interview, Musk took some heat from the European Union. The EU’s commissioner for internal market, Frenchman Thierry Breton, had posted an open letter to the X founder and tech mogul on Monday asking that he censor his interview with Trump to avoid “the amplification of harmful content.” Breton said Musk, who bought the platform in 2022, has a legal obligation to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) and fight the spread of misinformation. Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X (formerly Twitter), was copied.

“As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU,” Breton continued in his letter. Any “negative effect of illegal content” could lead the EU to take further action against X and Musk, using “our full toolbox, including by adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from harm.”

Musk replied to Breton’s letter with a meme that said: “Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!”

Trump returned to the app after having his account suspended following the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said at the time. When Musk took over, though, he reinstated Trump’s account.