Topline
Former President Donald Trump late on Tuesday blamed technical issues for distorting his voice during his discussion with Elon Musk on X Spaces, in response to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign’s mockery of his supposed “ slurring.”
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at the media for focusing technical glitches which marred … [+]
Key Facts
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the “complexity of modern day equipment, and cellphone technology” led to his voice sounding “somewhat different and strange” at certain points during the chat.
During his chat with Musk on Monday, several X users, including the official Harris campaign account, pointed out what they thought was Trump lisping and slurring his words—a line of attack the vice president’s campaign continued to lean on Tuesday.
The Trump campaign, however, initially dismissed questions about his distorted voice by telling various outlets: “It must be your ears.”
Trump’s post added that his campaign has “put out an actual, and perfect, recording of the conversation,” on his X account—which Musk has also reposted mentioning its “higher quality audio.”
In the post, Trump praised Musk: “Elon himself is very special – and I thank him for such a strong Endorsement.”
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News Peg
Trump lashed out against major media outlets Tuesday for focusing on X’s technical problems that delayed the start of the discussion. In a post on Truth Social, the former president claimed his conversation with Musk, which lasted more than two and a half hours, gained “all-time record Views/hits” and said, “all the Fake News wants to report is that the servers crashed (because of the tremendous volume!), and the show opened a little late.”
Key Background
On Monday, Trump fielded a series of friendly questions from Musk in a discussion on X that was impacted by several technical glitches. The discussion was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. EDT but was delayed by nearly 45 minutes, as several users were unable to access the streaming link. X users who were able to join the link were at first greeted with hold music. Musk blamed the disruption on a “massive DDOS [distributed denial of service] attack on X.” However, no verified evidence of such an attack has emerged and the rest of the website remained fully functional at the time.
Further Reading
Musk-Trump X Interview: Trump Takes Friendly Questions From Musk After Glitch-Plagued Start (Forbes)
