Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, appears poised to heavily influence the 2024 presidential election, but not in some dark, nefarious way.
The Tesla CEO announced that his X platform will play host to a town hall with former President Donald Trump which comes around three years after he was suspended from the site, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The former president was reinstated by Musk but has only posted on the micro blogging site one time since then.
Musk said his platform is also in talks with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a similar town hall.
President Joe Biden was also invited to take part in either a debate or town hall but his campaign declined, the report said.
The town halls will be done in coordination with NewsNation and the moderators will likely include a NewsNation host, but user questions will also be asked.
The news comes after it was reported that the former president is considering Musk for an advisory position in his administration if he becomes president again in the 2024 presidential election and after the CEO spoke against the verdict in the former president’s Manhattan trial.
Musk took to his platform to express his shock and bewilderment at the entire situation.
“Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system. If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” he wrote.
Musk’s remarks about the Trump trial are in line with comments he has increasingly made over the past year about domestic and foreign issues. “Now he is reportedly exploring what could be his next political project: Becoming an adviser to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal,” CN noted on Thursday.
According to a report by the Journal, which cited anonymous sources, Musk has entertained the idea of advising Trump in the event of his victory in the 2024 election. Musk reached out to Trump directly through a cellphone call to discuss a position that might afford Musk considerable sway over US policies. The report by the Journal did not clarify who initiated the discussions regarding the potential advisory role.
The Trump campaign did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment; Musk also did not respond to the Wall Street Journal, but Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told the outlet: “President Trump will be the only voice of what role an individual plays in his presidency.”
Musk also pushed back on the report Thursday in an X post, CNN noted: “There have not been any discussions of a role for me in a potential Trump Presidency.”
CN added:
However, a potential role in a future Trump administration could expand upon the role that Musk played in the previous Trump administration, when he served on two business advisory councils before quitting them over Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.
The privilege of whispering in Trump’s ear, should he win reelection, could give the billionaire – who is increasingly steeped in the rhetoric and imagery of the conservative culture wars – even more power on the global stage. Reporting that Musk and Trump’s relationship has improved comes after Musk’s politics have become more aligned with Trump’s.
Musk has increasingly aligned himself with conservative causes, CNN continued. He has publicly opposed Covid-19 lockdowns and expressed support for anti-vaccine stances. Since purchasing the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, he has promoted free speech on X and, unlike the previous leadership of the platform, has chosen not to censor conservative speech. Additionally, he has endorsed various arguments opposed to President Biden’s virtual open borders immigration policies.
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