Elon Musk spent billions to destroy Twitter. Now he’s unleashing Trump on X

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Elon Musk has spent billions of dollars for this moment.

In 2022, the world’s wealthiest man bought Twitter for $44 billion, then crudely reshaped the platform into X by slashing attempts to stop disinformation and conspiracy theories from flooding the platform and welcoming the return of previously banned users to set the tone.

He has created his own personal echo chamber that now reaches tens of millions of users daily, priming the platform for Donald Trump’s return to promote his presidential campaign.

Trump fired off several X posts on Monday morning — just hours before his scheduled “interview” with Musk on the platform at 8 p.m. ET. His return to a platform he once used as his daily megaphone comes as his 2024 presidential campaign struggles against his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, and as Musk fails to win over advisertisers while also suing them for leaving.

The former president’s account was “permanently suspended” from the influential social media platform in the wake of the January 6 attack, out of fear that his posts would incite more violence after he failed to stop a mob of his supporters from storming the Capitol to prevent his election loss.

Twenty-two months later, in November 2023, Musk opened up a poll that asked users to click “yes” or “no” on whether he should reinstate Trump.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk wrote, adding, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” the Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”

Trump has not made any indication that he plans to return to the platform full-time — he has his own multimillion-dollar investment in Twitter clone Truth Social, where he has an audience of more than 7.5 million followers.

But he posted his mugshot on X after he surrendered in Atlanta on election interference charges in 2023, and on August 12, he shared a video and a series of campaign statements to promote his “interview” with the man who made his return to the platform possible.

Musk has said Trump’s appearance will include a “highly entertaining” discussion that is “unscripted with no limits on subject matter.”

Musk formally endorsed Trump on July 13, after a 20-year-old gunman fired an AR-15 at the former president during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Over the last month, Musk has published dozens of statements to his more than 193 million followers to support Trump and his running mate JD Vance, or to attack Democratic rivals Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

False statements about US elections created by X’s AI chatbot Grok have prompted several secretaries of state to urge Musk to fix the platform, but it does not appear that Musk has even responded. The Independent’s requests for comment have all been met with an auto-generated message that X is “busy.”

Musk has not only wielded a platform and algorithm that he owns to support the GOP ticket, the billionaire has also launched a Trump-supporting political action committee that is able to spend and raise unlimited dollars to try to get Trump elected.

At least two states are investigating the PAC for deceiving voters with an apparently fake “voter registration” campaign.

Since his endorsement and PAC support, Trump has been gushing over Musk at campaign rallies and in fundraising messages.

“I love Elon Musk,” Trump said from a rally in Michigan on July 20. “We have to make life good for us smart people. And he’s as smart as you get … He gives me $45 million a month. C’mon. Not $45 million. He gives me $45 million a month.”

Musk later clarified that he was supporting Trump’s campaign at a “lower level” through his PAC.

Trump has spent months calling the electric vehicle industry “lunacy,” telling supporters they should “rot in hell, “and claiming that President Joe Biden’s support for EV manufacturing will be a “bloodbath” for the American economy.

Now that he has the support from Tesla’s CEO, Trump says he has “no choice” but to support them.

“I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump told supporters in Atlanta this month. “So, I have no choice.”

Within the last month, Trump’s fundraising arm has sent at least four messages saying “I love Elon Musk!” to tout his endorsement and promote what he is calling the “interview of the century.”

Trump returns to Twitter/X while still actively promoting the false election claims that fueled the attack that got him kicked off in the first place.

Musk’s own account — the most-followed account on the platform — reads more like a far-right activist’s feed, spreading alarmist and reactionary claims, including false statements about 2024 elections that have been viewed more than a billion times.

Musk mostly fails to correct or acknowledge false statements that appear in his feed, after they’ve been viewed tens of millions of times. None of 50 false claims he shared between January and July that were recently analyzed by a watchdog group had any “community note” to debunk them.

Attempts by election officials to address them directly also have failed to make a dent. Arizona election official Stephen Richer, a Republican, has directly responded to Musk’s false statements about mail-in ballots and voter eligibility, and has even invited Musk to tour Maricopa County’s facilities to look for himself.

Last month, Richer lost his re-election campaign to another GOP candidate who has dodged questions about whether he believes the 2020 results were fraudulent.

“Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” according to Center for Countering Digital Hate CEO Imran Ahmed, whose group found Musk responsible for more than 1 billion views on evidence-free election claims.

The platform is “failing woefully to contain the kind of algorithmically-boosted incitement that we all know can lead to real-world violence, as we experienced on January 6, 2021,” he said.