After earlier claims by former US President Donald Trump that "illegal immigration" had "saved" his life, the former president added another sharp statement to his arsenal in saying he would abolish the federal Department of Education.
In a much-anticipated interview with Elon Musk, delayed first because of a cyberattack and then held on Musk's social media site X, Trump spoke about the time he got shot while campaigning for an election rally. The interview, heard by more than one million listeners on X, ranged across a wide array of issues—immigration, the economy, education, climate change, and foreign relations with Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. Musk was a most amiable interlocutor and said he was going to vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
According to Musk, the interview was rescheduled at first because of the DDoS attack that hit on X. After it passed, Trump and Musk spent two hours talking.
Trump addressed the assassination attempt at an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He described how a chart on illegal immigration might have inadvertently saved his life. He continued to tell how the chart had been presented in some special way and this was its contribution to the activity. Trump termed it a miracle intervention. He said that it was God at work.
Trump has for long complained that the Biden-Harris administration let down its guard by leaving open the southern border to Mexico against undocumented immigration. Previously, he whips up Republican lawmakers to scuttle bipartisan legislation that would address the issue so he could make this the centerpiece of his campaign.
But Trump has also called for abolishing the federal Department of Education, which was created in 1980 to oversee federal education policy, dispense financial aid, gather data about schools and enforce equal access. Trump was especially outraged that the performance of US schools is not especially outstanding, considering other countries globally, yet per-pupil expenditure in the United States is unusually high. He also detailed plans to close the department, he said, with powerful allies including Musk.
The interview was hours delayed over what Musk described on X as a huge DDoS attack. The interview went ahead despite the issues, with a far smaller live audience and the full, unedited audio posted afterward.
Trump—permanently banned on X in January 2021—came back in August 2023, after the Musk takeover unbanned his account. His base has added more than 300,000 new followers since then; he now has about 88.3 million followers. By way of comparison, Truth Social has a much smaller user base.
These would most likely have an effect on the reach of Trump campaign messages, considering their support from Musk and the size of the platform. But now, with Kamala Harris joining the presidential race in 2024, it opens up new frontiers of challenges and opportunities for Trump's campaign.
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