A defining feature of Trump’s appearances in 2024 is weakness. Now that the former president isn’t sharing a stage with 81-year-old Joe Biden, he looks and sounds every bit his 78 years.
During his long interview Monday night on X Spaces with Elon Musk, Trump lisped and slurred in that way familiar to anyone who has spoken with a family member whose dentures are not quite set. He rambled about the beauty of Vice President Kamala Harris, talked about drilling for oil, and the danger of “nuclear warming.”
Musk and Trump spoke for around two hours. It was a free-wheeling conversation dominated by the former president and his weird obsessions. The talk was slated to start at 8 p.m. ET but, like all other high-profile appearances on Musk’s “Everything App,” it was a technical disaster that started late.
When the pair finally appeared, 40 minutes after eight, Musk blamed a DDOS attack. He was most likely lying, according to a report from The Verge.
Musk began his interview by praising Trump for not dying when an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. Trump called it a miracle and said it happened because he’d turned his head to look at a chart.
“All because I put down a chart on immigration that showed the numbers are so great. I love that chart even more now,” he said.
Immediately, Trump seemed off. He slurred his words and seemed to have a lisp. It was the kind of thing you could write off as technical difficulties related to X if not for the fact that people on Trump’s team were filming a video of the call. The weird lisp is present in person too.
Video of Trump hunched over and slurring his words while doing his Twitter Space. pic.twitter.com/V0hDakkJFA
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) August 13, 2024
The two-hour conversation was largely things we’ve all heard before. He repeatedly praised Elon while complaining about energy prices.
“It’s the price of gasoline,” he said. “Now your cars don’t require too much gasoline, so you cannot…you have a great product, I have to say, I have to be honest with you. I think that doesn’t mean everyone should have an electric car. But these are minor details. Your product is incredible.”
Trump’s brand of economic populism doesn’t quite resonate when filtered through 20-year-old political memes and delivered with a light lisp.
“But the Gasoline, Elon, it’s the cost of energy,” Trump said. “Not only gasoline, it’s the cost of heating your house. And cooling. And as that starts to come down, it gone up 100%, 150 and 200%. And that has to come down. When that comes down. And we’re going to drill, baby, drill. You know, they stopped drilling and then they went back to drilling because they went back to the Trump policy.”
He said Harris wasn’t smart enough to lead then seemed enchanted by her appearance on the cover of Time magazine.
“She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” he said.
Trump says he saw Kamala Harris today on Time Magazine. He says she looked beautiful but then says it was drawing. He then says she looked like Melania Trump. pic.twitter.com/pW9ctsCt0r
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 13, 2024
Trump then went on a tangent about how he thought climate change worked, which led to talking about nuclear weapons.
“The biggest threat is not global warming. Where the oceans are going to rise 1/8th of an inch over the next 400 years and you’ll have more oceanfront property,” he said, misunderstanding what would happen to the coastlines as sea levels continue to rise. “The biggest threat is not that, the biggest threat is nuclear warming. Because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power, and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden.”
There are nine countries in the world with nuclear weapons, not five. And the threat from “nuclear warming” is indeed severe. Even the limited use of nuclear weapons could radically alter weather patterns on the planet and lead to mass starvation. But the threat sounds hollow from Trump’s slurring lips, especially delivered in a tinny low-audio quality X space.
The parallels to failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’ apocalyptic campaign launch are impossible to miss. DeSantis appeared in an X Space alongside Musk. Both were plagued by technical difficulties, sounded terrible, and make the candidate appear weak and foolish.
“The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!” Trump wrote of DeSantis’ launch on failing social media site Truth Social. “His whole campaign will be a disaster! WATCH!”
