Elon Musk and Donald Trump had scheduled their conversation to begin at 8 p.m. Eastern Time as an X livestream. However, at 8 p.m., millions of the people who went to X found themselves staring at a blank purple square, thanks to a massive DDoS attack.* However, once the interview started, Trump finally had the space to expand on what matters to Americans, with Musk there to corral him gently when he went too far afield.

According to X data, the number of people who ultimately watched and talked about the conversation is staggering:

Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion https://t.co/s8x8QmdmnY

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

(As of this writing, 166 million people have viewed the interview tweet on Trump’s X page. And of course, the interview is spread across myriad other forums. The embed below is from an Indian outlet.)

This is great because Musk let Trump explain what a second Trump administration will look like. Instead of gotcha questions, other than the opening discussion about the assassination attempt, it was all about policies that will affect the U.S. for decades to come. The following is are my rough notes of the discussion between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Image by AI

It was a conversation. Musk carefully advertised it as a conversation, not an interview. This format elicited a lot of information, with  Elon Musk interspersing with his own opinions, allowing Trump to refine his comments. This was not a hostile interview; it was an extremely comprehensive talk. This was much better—and infinitely more informative—than Dana Bash’s hostile attacks on Vance when she “interviewed” him.

The assassination attempt. Musk complimented Trump’s courage under fire. Trump, in turn, mourned Corey Comperatore and spoke well of the other two shooting victims.  He also complimented the Secret Service sniper and agents around him while noting the USSS’s failure to coordinate on the ground. He found a beautiful irony in the fact that his illegal immigration chart saved his life.

Illegal immigration. Musk and Trump agreed that immigrants must come in legally. Both noted that Harris owned the border and that she and Biden could close the border tomorrow. No country can exist without borders and honest elections. Migrant crime is high and rising because countries all over the world are deliberately sending their criminals and crazies to America. Trump and Musk agree that four more years of this open-border migration means we will no longer have a country.

Inflation. Trump says that it is caused by the price of oil and is a disaster. Our national debt is not sustainable and will destroy the country. He notes that AI alone will require that our nation double its energy output to be competitive with China. Musk’s take is that inflation comes from government overspending. I say they’re both right.

Internation situation. Musk states that the world’s bad actors need to be afraid of the U.S. Neither Biden nor Harris will ever make them afraid. Trump responds that the Biden administration’s and Harris’s inability to inspire fear is why our world is dangerous and in turmoil. He points out that Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline at the same time he approved the Russian pipeline. If Trump were in charge, neither Hamas nor Russia would have attacked.

Elon’s Government Efficiency Commission: Trump embraces Argentina’s Milei for his small government approach. Musk notes that both Argentina and Venezuela should be doing well, but bad government policy hampers the latter.

Department of Education: Trump says that he wants to abolish the Department of Education. Doing so will cut education costs and improve state education outcomes.

The economy: Trump points out that it was the best for blue-collar workers, especially blacks and Hispanics. Trump and Musk believe Trump can turn the economy around.

Global warming: Musk, who believes in anthropogenic climate change, nevertheless holds that there is no need to overreact to the most extreme global warming claims. But over time, he says, we must move off of fossil fuels. Trump disagrees. He points out that, beneath American land, there are 500 years worth of oil reserves, and we need to drill for them. Musk thinks that CO2 buildup will become a problem of over 1000 ppm CO2. We need to move to it within 75 to 100 years. Trump is not all in on that.

Lawfare: What Biden is doing has never been done before in this country, and what’s happening to Trump in other states is centralized stuff right out of banana republics. Trump says he was targeted for complaining about election interference. Criminals are getting off scot-free. Political enemies are being prosecuted. The lawfare is completely crooked.

Biden: Trump says that Biden is a vegetable. Musk says that we do not have a president.

Kamala: Both men point out that she is stealing Trump’s policies, pretending to be strong on crime and strong on the border. She also stole his no tax on tips idea. Musk calls her ridiculous and far, far left.

The media are rewriting history: The media are complicit in hiding Harris’s history and policies.

Israel: Trump says October 7 never would have happened on his watch, and he and Musk agree that Harris is anti-Israel.

EU: Both agree that the EU is trying to shut down free speech. Trump also says that Europe has been trying to take advantage of the US for decades, including the fact that the US makes disproportionate payments to NATO for its defense of European nations.

Grand projects: Musk, a visionary, says that the US can still complete great projects that will amaze and improve life, both terrestrial and in outer space. Trump agrees.

Regulatory bureaucracy: Musk states that, in general, overregulation destroys society. Trump agrees and says that he was able to address it in one very important area—drug approval.

Number of Listeners: When Trump heard that over 50 million had tuned in to hear the conversation, he said, “I want to get paid for these numbers.”

The conversation:  As the conversation wrapped up, Trump pointed out that neither Biden nor Harris could sustain a two-hour interview.

Elon Musk: Explains that he is a moderate Democrat and that “For the good of the country, Trump must win this election.”

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*According to Cloudflare,

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices.

From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

A DDoS is a criminal act. We currently do not know who launched the DDoS against the Trump-Musk conversation, although an awful lot of people didn’t want it to happen, i.e., the MSM, the Democrat party, the EU, Iran, China, Russia...

Wolf Howling is a pseudonym.