Donald Trump criticized liberal and corporate media outlets for their overwhelmingly negative coverage of his record-setting X Spaces conversation with Elon Musk on Monday night. Many headlines focused on the brief technical difficulties during the interview, which were likely due to the high number of listeners, and dismissed the two-hour conversation as nothing more than a “ramble.”
“I spent 2 1/2 hours last night talking to Elon, a fantastic guy, getting all-time record views/hits,” Trump said. “And all the Fake News wants to report is that the servers crashed (because of the tremendous volume!) and that the show started a little late. What they should be reporting is the incredible number of people who were listening. I absolutely HATE the Fake News Media. So bad for our Country!”
X users quickly gathered and shared headlines from various media outlets that painted the interview in a similar negative light, calling it an “unmitigated disaster” and accusing Trump of repeating “the same old talking points” with a “lisp.” Musk responded to these headlines by posting, “A wall of negative headlines was so predictable. They’re such NPCs,” adding that the criticism would likely drive more people to listen to the conversation and “realize how much the legacy media lies to them.”
It was later clarified that the “lisp” some mentioned was due to Spaces’ audio compression.
Despite the negative press from corporate and left-wing media, Trump and Musk covered a wide range of topics during their conversation, including illegal immigration, inflation, deregulation of the energy industry, foreign wars, artificial intelligence, and a potential government efficiency commission, which Musk volunteered to join.
Over one million people tuned in to the live Spaces event, and over 1 billion have listened to the recording over all platforms. Although the stream initially faced issues, Musk explained that the delay was caused by a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. He has since extended an invitation to Vice President Kamala Harris for a similar interview on the platform.