Donald Trump's Twitter Conversation with Elon Musk Is a Disaster

And KamalaHQ takes advantage

I wasn’t going to Substack this morning because yesterday's presidential race had not seen any major developments, and I was savoring a drama-free day. There are 84 days left until the election, and Harris has pulled ahead in the polls, so virtually every day where there is no change in the status quo is a good day if you’re a Democrat. The fear, of course, is that either the Harris/Walz campaign commits an unforced error and loses its momentum or Donald Trump figures out a way to change the race dynamic.

Neither of those things happened yesterday, but the Trump campaign did have another embarrassing day, which is as good as a Harris win, especially the way that the KamalaHQ social media team needles Trump about it.

Last night, after hyping it for a week, Donald Trump spoke with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces. The conversation lasted nearly two hours. I’ve only heard a few seconds from it (more on that below), but I’ve read a couple of pieces about it, and from what I read, Trump said nothing of note: Just the same grievances and bellyaching he’s engaged in for the last three weeks.

But even if he had said something substantive, it would have been completely lost in the fact that there was a 45-minute delay to the conversation because of glitches on Twitter (later blamed, likely falsely, on a DDOS attack). You may recall that when Ron DeSantis launched his Presidential campaign, he also made the announcement on Twitter. It crashed, and Trump mocked the hell out of him. Recall this post, which KamalaHQ reposted last night ON TRUTH SOCIAL because these people are BOSS ASS BITCHES.

After the interminable conversation, the Harris campaign also released the following press release because they are exceptional at their jobs.

Everything about the interminable two-hour conversation — which several described as two men, neither of whom wanted to be the first to say bye — was mocked relentlessly online, including an apparent slur that Donald Trump developed, talking throughout as though his dentures were loose. The only real review I got of the conversation came from John Green on Threads. Amazing.

There was one clip that I did hear — put out by KamalaHQ — where Donald Trump praised Elon Musk for firing striking workers who were demanding better pay. This feels like maybe politics 101, but it probably doesn’t win over a lot of persuadable independent voters for a billionaire to joke and laugh with the richest man in the world about firing union workers who wanted better wages. The optics of that are pretty striking. That’s some Randolph and Mortimer bullshit right there.

I understand that Trump also told Musk that, if he lost, he’d move to Venezuela. "If something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we'll meet the next time in Venezuela, because it'll be a far safer place to meet than our country. OK, so we'll go. You and I will go, and we'll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela."

Is there no extradition treaty in Venezuela? Is that why he wants to go?

Also, this was said. Really. Intentionally. Out loud. I double checked because I couldn’t believe it.

— At one point during the conversation with Musk, Trump said that there were 60 million people listening before someone whisper-corrected him. There were actually 1.1 million people listening, or less than the number of people who would hear him ramble on a phone call on Fox and Friends. Trump must have been furious.

— An abortion rights referendum has been put on the ballot in Arizona for November. That can’t hurt Democratic turnout.

— There was nothing intentional about it, but Donald Trump was assigned the jet plane previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein as his current jet. That says all you need to know about the state of his campaign right now.

— Glenn Close, who played the memaw of J.D. Vance’s character in Hillbilly Elegy, shaded Vance on Instagram.

— KamalaHQ also posted this yesterday.

— CNN is reporting that workers at a Kentucky startup that Vance funded complained about nightmare working conditions.

Follow Pajiba on Threads. Also, for those wondering, we like to replace header images that should be of Elon Musk with Lee Pace for aesthetic reasons, and with apologies to Lee Pace.