By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
The conversation between the two rich, bigoted, and idiotic white men was everything you can imagine it would be, writes John Casey. Well, with a couple of surprises.
What a fiasco! Yes, call me insanely crazy, but while I watched my nightly dose of MSNBC with captions, I had headphones on in a self-torture attempt to listen to the Elon Musk-Donald Trump interview on X, or Twitter or whatever it’s called. And if you did too, did you get a sense of déjà vu?
Just like what happened with Musk’s ill-fated attempt to interview Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, the Trump-Musk interview was delayed by 40 minutes. I gave up 20 minutes in. Musk said the delay was because someone hacked X — ah, yeah, OK, sure, whatever! Put two buffoons in a room to do something techie, and well, you get what you paid for.
So I got up early this morning and during my workout tried to listen to some of the garbage they spewed last night. It was everything you can imagine — incoherent, inflammatory, insulting, inexplicable, and on and on and on. The whole time they talked, I kept asking myself, Why in God’s name would anyone listen to this? The joke is on me, I guess.
Of course, Trump made derogatory comments about transgender individuals. He said being trans was a “dangerous ideology.” And of course, Musk, who has a trans daughter who he shuns, agreed. The transphobes both said gender is immutable from the one you're assigned at birth. Combined, these two, with Musk’s social platform and with Trump’s motor mouth, give credence and life to trans hate. It’s despicable, and they have blood on their hands from the trans murders that we cover.
Trump also continued his verbal assault of Vice President Kamala Harris, making disparaging remarks about her appearance. In a bizarre and offensive comment — at least for Harris — Trump compared Harris's looks with those of his wife, Melania Trump, It reminded me of how he thought a picture of young E. Jean Carroll was his second wife, Marla Maples.
"She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live," he said of an illustration of Harris on a Time cover. "It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania.” Then he added a bit later, “She's a beautiful woman, so we'll leave it at that."
And despite the whole Republican Party telling Trump to lay off calling Harris dumb, he just couldn’t help himself, particularly in talking with Musk, another misogynist. Trump said Harris is “not smart” and unqualified for her role.
If you didn’t know by now, to Trump, women are just “dumb,” “nasty,” or sex objects. It’s a 50-year pattern with Trump, reducing women to their physical appearance.
I listened to this part of the conversation a few times, and it is just downright creepy. We all knew Trump was creepy — like his running mate — to begin with, but comparing the looks of someone to your wife is…well, it’s grotesque if you think about it. His comments were beyond the scale of inappropriate.
Trump also made remarks that were insensitive and out of touch regarding Jewish people and Black Americans. It was as if he was continuing the belittling and racist rant he made last week at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. He told Musk that Black people were ungrateful for his policies and claimed that he had done more for Black communities than any other president (Abe Lincoln can’t get any rest with Trump dropping his name). He also criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and suggested that it had caused more harm than good.
He also said that Jewish people who vote for Harris should have their heads examined and that Harris is so “anti-Israel.”
His comments about trans people, women, Black people, and Jewish people just validated that Trump doesn’t see individuals. He sees people as stereotypes described with worn-out tropes. And with his “good ol’ boy” Musk next to him, the two white, wealthy, narrow-minded men were birds of a feather who squawk grievances together.
And if you need a lesson in softball questions, look no further than the antithesis of an interrogator, Musk. He threw questions to Trump about election fraud, immigration, and crime so that Trump could offer up his worn-out, incoherent, untenable, and false explanations. You can check dozens of sources that validate the facts that there was no election fraud, Trump stopped a bipartisan immigration bill, and crime is down — not up.
They also, of course, talked about crowd size. He also laughingly said that “60 million people” were listening to his interview with Musk. I can’t stop laughing — there were estimated to only be 1.3 million.
Now, I know that many moderates and undecided voters feel that crowd size is the most important issue facing America right now. And while the Earth boils, hurricanes roar, wildfires spread, and tornadoes wipe out towns, Trump riffed on climate change. He horrifically said that sea-level rise means more oceanfront property. He said what?
Most moderate and independent voters — actually, any sane American — know that Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un are enemies of our country — except to one man, and now his accomplice, Musk.
Trump said this: “I know Putin, I know President Xi, I know Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I know every one of them. I’m not saying anything good or bad [there’s nothing good to say!]. They’re at the top of their game. They’re tough, they’re smart, they’re vicious, and they’re going to protect their country. Whether they love their country, they probably do. It’s just a different form of love, but they’re going to protect their country.”
Love, love, love — when you think of Trump, that’s the last thing you think of. He loves Putin and Kim so much, I’m surprised that he doesn’t compare that love to his love of Melania.
I listened to parts of his rambling nonsense, and like the Harris campaign, I noticed that he was slurring his words more than usual (the joke among the team this morning is that his dentures were slipping). The lack of structure in the interview, combined with Musk's often passive role, allowed Trump to dominate the conversation with little pushback, which only amplified the absurdity of many of his claims.
The Harris campaign summed it up best in its many in real-time responses to the interview on social media, “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,” the campaign staff wrote.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
