Mr Trump's conversation with Mr Musk on X comes amid a Democratic surge, and the event could be Mr Trump's way of changing the dynamic.
Billionaires Elon Musk and Donald Trump just had an exchange on X that attracted great attention from the world - Photo: NIKKEI
Trump's Twitter account was locked after the 2021 Capitol Hill riots. But nearly four years on, Twitter has changed hands and could now continue to play a huge role in this year's US presidential election.
Duet of two billionaires
In a rare public conversation between the two sides, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk largely agreed on issues such as his recent assassination attempt, illegal immigration and some government regulations.
However, the conversation, which lasted more than two hours, was criticized for revealing very little about Mr. Trump's policies in a second term if he were elected. Instead, the Republican presidential candidate gave listeners the feeling that they had just attended an online... election campaign. And from that perspective, the "campaign" was basically successful and controversial, exactly as the two characters in it were portrayed.
According to AP, more than 878,000 X network users had connected to the Trump-Musk interview more than 40 minutes after it started. X's count showed a peak of 1.3 million followers. In three hours, the conversation was shown more than 77 million times on X and received significant interactions: 340,000 likes, 104,000 retweets and 318,000 comments.
The numbers above describe quite accurately the posture of Mr. Trump - who has been ready to "declare war" on the mainstream media in the US since 2016 and relies on social networks to make important statements. This is also a success for Mr. Musk's social network X when it brought Mr. Trump back, an impressive "advertising event".
It's no wonder the conversation has attracted so much attention. As CNN put it, it was a conversation between "the richest man in the world and the man who was and is likely to become the most powerful man in the world." And their union was quickly criticized by Democrats and those on the political left.
With different views on climate change, clean energy, cryptocurrency, public spending issues..., Mr. Musk is hated by the Democratic Party no less than Mr. Trump.
Mainstream media in the US mostly focused on X's "technical error" that caused the online meeting to be interrupted for several dozen minutes. Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump's rival candidate and the person who was attacked by Mr. Trump several times in the above conversation, also used quite harsh words when talking about this online meeting.
"The Trump campaign's entire campaign caters to people like Elon Musk and himself, self-obsessed rich guys who are willing to sell out the middle class and who can't have a streaming event in 2024," said Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello.
Game changer?
Data: Bao Anh - Photo: Reuters - Graphics: T.DAT
Mr. Trump's path to the White House was once considered wide open after the recent assassination attempt. However, it was quite surprising that Ms. Harris was rated higher despite being only a reluctant choice to replace President Joe Biden.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, Trump led his opponent by 3.3 percentage points. But a national average of polls by the Hill and Decision Desk HQ shows Harris leading Trump by 0.3 points.
Harris has an even deeper lead in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with a recent New York Times-Siena College poll showing her leading by 4 points in all three states.
In other words, Trump’s appearance on X with Musk comes at a time when the Democratic Party is on the rise, and it could be Trump’s way of changing the game. CNN, a staunch anti-Trump network, also acknowledged that the former president got a lot out of his two-hour conversation with Musk.
"Trump would not have become president without Twitter (X), and his rise as a political force in 2016 coincided with the site's heyday. His skill at harnessing new media was unlike any other politician, and made that election a unique combination of one man and his moment," CNN commented.
Musk has drawn criticism for reactivating Trump’s Twitter account, as well as for his controversial support for free speech. For Democrats and mainstream European politics, speech is “free” only within limits. Freedom of speech should not come with the risk of “spreading misinformation and hate speech.”
It’s unclear whether Trump will actually return to Twitter (X), since he has long used his own social network Truth. But his appearance on X could be a direct way to capitalize on the resonance between himself and a platform that is still very familiar to voters.
Technical glitch or cyber attack?
There was a small but prominent detail in the recent Trump - Musk conversation, when the event was delayed for a few dozen minutes. Mr. Musk said that it was the result of X being attacked in the form of DDoS, which means it was crashed because too many machines sent requests at the same time. The American press did not believe this was a cyber attack but also did not accept that X had problems because too many people accessed and followed the conversation above. Some comments on X mocked Mr. Trump for boasting too much about the number of visitors. On the contrary, Mr. Musk said a meaningful sentence: "Most traditional media will disregard Mr. Trump's exchange, so it will probably push the total number of listeners to over 200 million".Tuoitre.vn
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/ong-trump-tranh-cu-tren-x-co-thay-doi-cuc-dien-hien-tai-20240814081920435.htm
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