Actually, Interviewing Presidential Candidates Is a Good Thing

The freakout begins: “Elon Musk is slated to interview [former President] Donald Trump tonight on X…I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have? Any sort of stopping that, or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that?” a reporter from The Washington Post asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a moment that went viral yesterday.

Her response was fairly anodyne but alluded to the purportedly problematic nature of Trump being interviewed or platformed at all, which is itself telling.

“You’ve heard us talk about this many times from here, about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation,” responded Jean-Pierre. “These are also private companies, so we’re mindful of that too….I just don’t have any specifics on what we have been doing internally as it relates to the interviews.”

The fact that a professional journalist—for a massive, mainstream publication—believes it improper for the Republican presidential nominee to be interviewed, and for that interview to reach the ears of more than a million people, remains a bit stunning (that is, if you haven’t been paying attention to the journalism-industry meltdown over Trump that’s been going on since he announced his candidacy in 2015). Presidential campaigns have long been in the business of spreading, if not misinformation, then at least partial truths and talking points of questionable veracity that are designed to sell.

To act like this was invented by Trump is absurd, and to suggest that the White House—occupied by Trump’s former opponent—has a responsibility to stop it is horrifying.

But American journalists aren’t the only ones attempting to stop him from being heard.

Just a little reminder: “The European Union’s digital enforcer wrote an open letter to tech mogul Elon Musk on Monday ahead of a planned interview with former United States President Donald Trump to remind him of the EU’s rules on promoting hate speech,” reports Politico. 

“As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU,” wrote Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton on X. “With great audience comes greater responsibility.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s former vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has said Musk should face “personal sanctions”—which are “much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines”—and even, possibly, an “arrest warrant” if he “continue[s] stirring up unrest” on the platform.

“The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society,” says Daisley. “The idea that a boycott—whether by high-profile users or advertisers—should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful.” (All Musk has done, for the record, is criticize British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for his handling of riots over immigration, calling him a “hypocrite” and “two-tier Keir.”)

Just incredible that the person who said this was once making executive-level decisions at Twitter:

“Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media.” https://t.co/9M9W6LMl1G

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) August 12, 2024

The EU is threatening X with legal action “in relation to” a planned interview between Elon and Trump, as it may “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse” https://t.co/LbTSaEoiR1

— Mason (@webdevMason) August 12, 2024

Back to the actual event: As for the Trump-Musk discussion itself, the first 30 minutes were marred by technical problems, which Musk attributed to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The rest was a free-flowing, ostensibly comfortable conversation between Musk and Trump that wasn’t even especially revealing.

Trump noted that he wants to shutter the Department of Education and “move education back to the states,” conceding that “not every state will do great.” (He thinks maybe 35 or so would “do great.”) Trump downplayed the threat of global warming, which Musk pushed back on a fair bit. “It’s not like the house is on fire immediately,” Musk said. “It is something we need to move towards. On balance it’s probably better to move faster than slower.” And, quite sensibly, that climate progress should happen “without vilifying the oil and gas industry. People can still…drive gasoline cars.”

Musk used the opportunity to vent some of his frustration at President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee/Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that talking to them is “like talking to an NPC,” or non-player character.

On the dictators of the world, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump said what we already know he believes: “Getting along well with them is a good thing, not a bad thing.”

In short, everyone played their part perfectly and predictably. Nothing shocking was revealed. It was moderately interesting, as both Musk and Trump are fascinating characters with strong beliefs who clearly command the respect (or at least the attention) of millions.

Perhaps the most interesting part was how threatened so many people were by this conversation taking place at all.

Scenes from New York: A judge has thrown Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the state’s ballot, so you will—at least as of right now—no longer be able to vote for him if you live here.

• “Trump as de facto Fed Chair is a dangerous idea,” writes Jonathan Levin at Bloomberg. “Threatening central bank independence is among the worst economic proposals ever floated by a major-party presidential candidate.”
• “When my mother told me she hadn’t ever considered how I felt about growing up without her, my first reaction was that her wiring was off,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic, reflecting on being abandoned by her mother, who pursued Socialist activism instead of parenthood. “But speaking with those two Socialist candidates, I came to view it differently. All around my mother, people were being told to give up one life here and start another there. And they did, no questions asked. She must have seen me as just another comrade being relocated for the movement. She had not considered my feelings because, I suspect, she had not considered her own.”
• Live-caption glasses help deaf people to follow conversations as they’re happening.
• “Ukrainian troops sliced easily through a thinly defended border, pushing tens of miles into Russia and shifting the narrative of the war after a glum year in which Ukraine had struggled, often in vain, to hold back Russian advances across its eastern front,” reports The New York Times. “By Monday, Ukraine’s commanding general had told President Volodymyr Zelensky that his troops held 390 square miles of territory in Russia’s southeastern Kursk region. Two dozen settlements were overrun.”
• So very true:

Disclaimer: The Democrats’ “Mind your own damn business” rhetoric applies to abortion only.

Not your money, job, business, school choices, covid “snitch lines,” energy usage, DEI-compliance, guns, “hate speech,” etc.

Then suddenly “government is what we do together.” https://t.co/1N0WOqxtdq

— Brian Riedl ???? ???????? (@Brian_Riedl) August 11, 2024

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