Republican presidential nominee talked about his political campaign with billionaire ally Elon Musk
The interview on Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, was initially delayed after thousands of users complained they are unable to access the stream
Musk blamed the issues on a "massive" cyber attack on X
Trump returned to X for the first time in nearly a year and shared several campaign videos on Monday
The richest person in the world has endorsed Trump for president and has been involved in fundraising efforts for the Republican
It comes as Trump's rival for the White House, Kamala Harris, has been riding a wave of momentum in US media
Since Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic nominee, Harris has held a series of large rallies with her running mate Tim Walz
With less than three months until the election on 5 November, both candidates are looking for the next moment that could define their campaigns
We're finishing up with our live coverage of Donald Trump's conversation with Elon Musk.
You can read a full wrap of what happened here.
And if you want to find out more about how Musk and Trump put aside their differences, you can read this article.
Our team today was Max Matza, Christal Hayes, Emily McGarvey and Brandon Livesay.
Thanks for following along with us.
After a delayed start of more than 40 minutes because of technical problems, which Elon Musk blamed on a cyber attack, the two-hour long "conversation" between Donald Trump and the billionaire owner of social media network X has wrapped. Here's some of the main talking points they discussed:
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João da Silva
Business reporter
Image source, XElon Musk’s conversation with Donald Trump on X was delayed by more than half an hour because of what the tech billionaire described as a cyberattack.
"There appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Working on shutting it down," Musk said, referring to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack, which has been commonly used by hackers to disrupt online services.
Shortly after the scheduled start time users were seeing a "not available" message when trying to access the service.
“A DDoS attack sends a very large number of signals to an online target to disrupt it,” said Anthony Lim, Director of the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace and International Studies in Singapore.
“It is unlikely it would affect only one single service or feature on a website.”
Lim added however that it is possible that a large number of people trying to listen could have temporarily crashed the service.
Musk did explain in a subsequent post that the system was tested with “8 million concurrent listeners” before his live chat with Trump.
During the conversation, X Spaces showed about 1 million people listening in.
Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter
Image source, Getty ImagesElon Musk's decision to back Trump might appear a startling shift for a man who had historically shunned political donations.
He reportedly once waited in line for six hours to shake Barack Obama’s hand, and as recently as 2018 described himself as politically moderate.
In 2017, he was among the first members to quit a White House business council, parting ways with Trump over climate change policies.
His company, Tesla, makes electric cars, which Trump has repeatedly criticised as expensive and impractical. However, Musk has long bristled at oversight by financial regulators.
On social media, he has increasingly waded into other debates over Covid lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, China policy and transgender issues.
Musk, whose SpaceX rocket firm does billions of dollars of government business, has a relationship with a possible Trump administration to consider as well.
The chat between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has just ended.
The pair spoke for about two hours, after the chat was initially delayed by tech glitches.
Liv McMahon
Technology reporter
Former President Trump said at a rally last weekend he had “no choice” but to change his tune on electric vehicles after Elon Musk’s endorsement of his presidential bid. “I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” he told attendees.
During this interview, Trump has spoken about Tesla cars and has praised the technology. And Musk has also told Trump about his desire to move towards sustainable energy.
At the Republican National Convention, Trump vowed to slash President Biden’s regulations aiming to boost electric car adoption on day one of his presidency.
He’s opposed a mass shift towards electric vehicles out of concern over US auto worker jobs. But he has also said EVs themselves “cost a fortune” and “don’t go far enough”. This hasn’t stopped him from owning one, though, per a 2015 Washington Post article, external which cited his campaign saying one of two American cars in his fleet at the time was a Tesla.
Musk's renewed support of Trump has not gone down well with some Tesla fans and customers.
Last week a German firm said it would stop buying Teslas for its corporate fleet due to an "incompatibility" between Musk’s comments and what Tesla represents.
The terms "slurring" (20k posts) and "dentures" (15k posts) are both currently trending on Twitter in response to Trump's voice during this conversation with Elon Musk.
It has seemed as though Trump's voice is slightly different to his usual speech.
Harris's campaign has also commented on Trump's voice, posting in one tweet: "Trump, slurring, says he’s okay with climate change and rising sea levels because he thinks he’ll 'have more oceanfront property'".
When asked about it, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “Must be your hearing”.
Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent
Musk has given a short monologue on how he’s not usually political, but also says he did once line up to shake Barack Obama’s hand.
He stutters as he says America is at a fork in the road, but doesn’t elaborate much on that before saying he thinks independent voters should vote for Donald Trump.
Thus proving this is not an interview of a major political candidate by Musk, but quite simply a major advert for Trump by his platform.
Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent
I doubt independent voters have learnt anything new about Donald Trump so far - if that was meant to be the aim.
People who love him will still love him, and the reverse will be true. But maybe we’ve got more of an insight into Elon Musk.
For example, he says he likes strong leaders, and as Trump talks fondly of North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, Musk says Trump meeting with him was cool.
Trump and his VP pick JD Vance have been doing a lot of interviews and making a point of the fact Harris and Walz haven’t so far.
Trump says Kamala Harris would never speak to Musk like he is doing right now, although this isn’t an interview by any stretch of the imagination.
And given Musk called Harris a “far left radical” and whole heartedly endorsed Trump, he would clearly not give her the soft treatment he’s giving Trump.
Trump claims that Harris's running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, signed a law authorising schools to place tampons in boys bathrooms at public schools.
The state law, external, which was enacted last year, did not specify in which bathrooms tampons would be available. It only says that tampons should be made available to anyone who menstruates.
Republicans have been highly critical of the law, calling Walz "Tampon Tim".
Walz, meanwhile, has embraced the nickname and has said he is proud of the work he did making menstrual products freely available.
Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent
There’s a clash, but it doesn’t last long - proving Donald Trump’s dominance over Elon Musk here.
Musk says he wants to come up with a positive future and talks about tackling global warming and rising sea levels.
He seems to be advocating for the same transition to renewable energy that Democrats have been pushing for years.
Donald Trump pivots: The biggest threat is not global warming. It’s nuclear warming, he says.
Musk laughs.
Trump: "No, really."
Trump says five countries have nuclear. It’s actually nine: US, UK, Israel, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, India and North Korea.
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump has told Musk that when he was president he built hundreds of miles of wall to protect the southern border.
VERDICT: The length of border wall built during Trump’s presidency depends on what you are measuring, but even if you include new sections as well as parts that have been replaced or reinforced, the total is less than 500 miles.A report by US Customs and Border Protection puts the total at 458 miles, external. However, only 85 miles of entirely new sections of wall were built under Trump.
The rest has been either replacing or reinforcing existing barriers.
Towards the end of the Trump presidency, the BBC looked into the status of the border wall.
President Biden suspended construction when he came into office, but last year his administration allowed the building of a section of wall in southern Texas in an effort to stop rising levels of immigration.
Cai Pigliucci
US reporter
Elon Musk seems to be pitching himself for a job in a potential Trump administration in the latter half of this interview.
He’s offered to help Trump with accountability on government spending, possibly aiming to set himself up to help with a committee on government deficit. Trump says he’d like Musk to be involved.
US media reported back in May that Trump has been considering offering Musk an advisory role in his adminstration, should he win.
With Musk complimenting Trump and agreeing with him throughout this interview, it could be that this goes both ways: an interview for Trump, and a very public job interview for Musk.
Emma Vardy
Reporting from California
Donald Trump lays into the leadership of California, saying “it’s a badly run state”.
In typical style he also uses an offensive nickname for the California Governor Gavin Newsom, and criticises his record on education.
But California is a democrat-run state, with abortion rights and strong gun control laws, so it’s hardly surprising that it would come under fire from Donald Trump.
Governor Gavin Newsom is also unafraid to speak his thoughts plainly on Donald Trump, having previously described him as “a bit unhinged”.
Attacking Kamala Harris for her California roots has also become a feature of the Trump campaign.
"I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states," says Trump, calling for the federal agency to be eliminated.
He says that US students are falling behind compared to their peers around the world.
"There are a lot of advantages," to eliminating the Department of Education, he says, claiming that it will cut education costs in half.
The plan is similar to Project 2025, a conservative wishlist that the Trump campaign has distanced itself from.
It also mirrors the Republican Party platform that was codified at the Republican National Convention last month.
TRUMP CLAIM: Speaking to Musk, Trump says his administration gave the largest ever tax cuts to the American people.
VERDICT: As President, Donald Trump did bring in big tax cuts but they weren’t the largest in history. Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 brought in sweeping cuts to taxation across the board. These are due to expire in 2025 unless the next administration extends them.
According to analysis done by the independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, external Trump’s tax cuts were the eighth-largest since 1918 measured as a percentage of the size of the economy (GDP), and the fourth-largest in dollar terms since 1940 adjusted for inflation.
Although, Trump didn't introduce the largest tax cut overall he did pass the largest corporate tax cut in US history. The 2017 law reduced this tax rate from 35% to 21%.
That was more than the cut passed under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, which lowered the rate from 46% to 34%.
At the end of June, Trump told Bloomberg , externalthat he supported cutting the corporate tax rate further, from its current level of 21%, down to 15%.
While this interview is unfolding, the Harris-Walz campaign has sent out a fundraising appeal in an email to supporters.
The subject line is: "The two worst people you know are live this evening".
"It’s not enough that Musk has pledged to donate millions of dollars to help re-elect Trump. He’s using his purchased platform - one of the largest social media sites in the world - to spread Trump’s unhinged and hateful agenda to millions of users," the campaign email claims, adding italics to the word 'millions'. It calls Musk a "lackey" for Trump.
Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign has also taken to Truth Social, Trump's own social media platform, to continue its attacks on him during this interview.
Donald Trump has hit out at Kamala Harris for not having done any long-form interviews since she secured the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, much like the one he says is doing now.
"It's nice to have a forum like this," says Trump.
Referring to Biden, he says, "It's pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can't answer a question or is afraid to do an interview", despite the president giving an interview to US broadcaster CBS News just days ago.
Musk goes on to claim that Harris wouldn't do an interview with him.
While Harris has been holding regular large rallies, she has not sat down for a major media interview since she entered the presidential race.
Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent
This is very much Donald Trump going through his long list of grievances with Elon Musk listening patiently and sympathetically.
He’s again lamented the loss of President Biden who he clearly wanted an election rematch with.
He says “this was a coup, this was a coup of the president of the United States,” in reference to Kamala Harris taking Joe Biden’s place in this race.
Previously he’s called it unconstitutional. None of this is accurate, but what’s interesting is that Trump has never accepted his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
This is probably the closest we’ll ever get to him admitting the truth: Biden won the White House legitimately.
Image source, Getty ImagesA file photo of the Israeli Iron Dome intercepting rockets in August, 2024
"Why shouldn't we have an Iron Dome? Israel has one," says Trump.
His comment is a reference to Israel's missile defence system that can destroy short-range weapons fired at the country.
Iron Dome was developed after the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a militant group based in southern Lebanon.
It was created by Israeli firms Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, with some US support.
Read more about how Iron Dome works here