Politics
Trump chats with Musk in lengthy, overarching interview as Harris continues snubbing media
Former President Donald Trump spoke with tech billionaire Elon Musk in an overarching, lengthy interview Monday evening on X as Vice President Kamala Harris continues avoiding the media since landing on the top of the Democratic ticket for the White House.
“It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a very friendly interview. She’s got all friendly interviewers,” Trump said of Harris Monday evening during his roughly two-hour interview with Musk on X Space.
Trump’s comments come as Harris has avoided the media for 22 days. She has snubbed formal press conferences or sit-down interviews, including for a Time magazine cover story, since she emerged as the DNC’s nominee for the White House after President Biden dropped out of the race last month.
“She is considered more liberal, by far, than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical-left lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, very quickly you’re not going to have a country anymore. And she’ll go back to all the things that she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero,” Trump added of Harris.
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Trump’s interview with Musk kicked off after 8:30 p.m. Monday, following a “massive” distributed denial-of-service attack on the platform that caused delays, Musk explained on X. More than 1 million people ultimately listened to the interview according to the live tracker throughout the discussion.
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The two held a laid back interview, where Musk prompted Trump with topics before the 45th president was offered ample time to elaborate on policy issues such as immigration, the assassination attempt on his life last month, spiraling inflation and closing the Department of Education in favor of states taking the mantle on school systems.
“I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states. … Of the 50 [states], I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,” Trump said, while noting left-wing states such as California could struggle if he does eliminate the DOE.
The 45th president also spoke at length with Musk about the current state of immigration in the U.S.
“I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East,” Trump told Musk, who endorsed Trump earlier this year.
Trump said that despite Harris’ recent rhetoric to address the spiraling migrant crisis at the border, she and Biden have had years to address migration but “won’t do anything.”
“She had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent and he’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something, because he’s not too good,” he said.
On the topic of immigration, Trump also credited a slide his campaign made showing immigration stats for saving his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month during a rally, when shooter Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate him. The 45th president looked over to the slide on immigration data when Crooks opened fire, which narrowly saved his life as the position of his head had abruptly changed.
“That slide — illegal immigration saved my life,” he told Musk. “The incredible thing is that the chart, I used it less than 20% of the time. It was just a moment.”
“It’s always to my left, never my right, and it’s always at the end of the speech,” Trump added of the position of the slide.
“I’m going to sleep with that chart always,” he joked.
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Trump went on to rattle off a list of wars and world events the U.S. could have avoided if Biden were not in the Oval Office, while noting he was tough on nations such as Russia, China and North Korea and knows the countries’ respective leaders “well.”
“First of all, the Israeli attack would have never happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine, and we’d have no inflation, and we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan mess, if you think of it well … if you take a few of those events away, and we have a different world.”
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He pointed to his tweets back in 2017 when he slammed North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as “little rocket man” as tensions heightened between the two nations amid a series of North Korea missile and nuclear tests.
“I had that problem worked out very quickly,” Trump said of North Korea. “It was nasty at the beginning with Rocket Man … [Jong-Un] said he has a red button on his desk. I said, ‘I have a red button on my desk too, but my red button is much bigger, and my red button works.’ And then I called him ‘Little Rocket Man.’”
“Anyway, here’s the bottom line. All of a sudden, I got a call from him, and they said they want to meet, they wanted to meet me. And we met … and I got along with him great. We were in no danger, but President Obama thought we were gonna end up in a war, a nuclear war, with him,” he said.
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Trump also addressed Biden’s exit from the 2024 race, saying it was a Democratic “coup” that pressured Biden to drop out. Biden dropped out of the running last month as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age and Democrats and traditional allies of the party called on him to exit the race.
“This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,’” Trump said.
“They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,” Musk added before Trump slammed Biden as “the worst president in history.”
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Trump made a return to X, formerly Twitter, earlier on Monday after nearly a year of not posting on his once-favored social media platform. Before X sold to Musk in 2022, Trump was suspended from his Twitter account following the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He seldom posted on the platform after Musk reinstated his account, only sharing his mugshot in August of last year.
“Are you better off now than you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!” Trump posted earlier Monday amid a flurry of campaign ads.
Ahead of his interview with Trump, Musk hyped the interview as one that “should be highly entertaining!” as it “is unscripted with no limits on subject matter.”
“This country is going down, and these people are bad people that we’re running against. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border, and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they stop crime,” Trump said towards the end of the interview.
“It’s so incredible.”
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Politics
Video: Democrats Question Hegseth About Misconduct Allegations
new video loaded: Democrats Question Hegseth About Misconduct Allegations
transcript
transcript
Democrats Question Hegseth About Misconduct Allegations
Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee called Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, unfit to serve. Meanwhile, Republicans praised Mr. Hegseth’s record and performance.
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“The totality of your own writings and alleged conduct would disqualify any service member from holding any leadership position in the military, much less being confirmed as the secretary of defense.” “Have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature? The fact is that your own lawyer said that you entered into an N.D.A. and paid a person who accused you of raping her a sum of money to make sure that she did not file a complaint. I have read multiple reports of your regularly being drunk at work. Will you resign as secretary of defense if you drink on the job, which is a 24/7 position?” “I’ve made this commitment on behalf of —” “Will you resign as secretary of defense?” “I’ve made this commitment on behalf of the men and women I’m serving —” “I’m not hearing an answer to my question. So I’m going to move on.” “You claim that this was all anonymous. We have seen records with names attached to all of these, including the name of your own mother. So don’t make this into some anonymous press thing.” “I’m quoting you from the podcast. ‘Women shouldn’t be in combat at all.’ What I see is that there’s a 32-day period in which you suddenly have another description about your views of women in the military, and I just want to know what changed in the 32 days that the song you sang is not the song you come in here today to sing?” “Senator, the concerns I have and the concerns of many have had, especially in ground combat units, is that in pursuit of certain percentages or quotas, standards have been changed.” “Our adversaries watch closely during times of transition, and any sense that the Department of Defense that keeps us safe is being steered by someone who is wholly unprepared for the job, puts America at risk. And I am not willing to do that.” “I know what I don’t know. I know I’ve never run an organization of three million people with a budget of $850 billion.” “Why do you want to do this job? What’s your, what drives you?” “Because I love my country, Senator. And I’ve dedicated my life to the warfighters.” “He is a decorated post-9/11 combat veteran. He will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down.”
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Politics
Biden says he's been carrying out ‘most aggressive climate agenda’ in history as he designates CA monuments
President Biden on Tuesday signed proclamations to establish the Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, which will protect hundreds of thousands of acres of land in California, during his last week in office.
The event was delayed by a week due to the destructive wildfires raging in Southern California, and Biden revealed that he had wanted to do the ceremony in the state, but it had to be moved to the White House.
“We’ve been carrying out the most aggressive climate agenda ever in the history of the world,” the president said in the East Room of the White House, before discussing the national monuments. “Our natural wonders are the heart and soul of our nation.”
He said in his second week as president he signed an executive order “establishing the first ever conservation goal to protect 30% of all our lands and waters everywhere in America by 2030 … I call this national campaign America the Beautiful … And over the last four years, we’ve delivered … putting America on track to meet that bold goal, restoring it, creating new national monuments, conserving hundreds of millions of acres of land and waters all across America, from New England to Minnesota, Texas to Colorado, Arizona, Alaska.”
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He added, “Over the past four years, I’m proud to have kept my commitment to protect more land and water than any president in American history.”
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The Chuckwalla National Monument will protect more than 600,000 acres of public land in the California desert near Joshua Tree National Park and the Colorado River, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.
The Sáttítla Highlands National Monument will protect more than 224,000 acres of land in Northern California in the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity, and Klamath national forests and “provides protection to tribal ancestral homelands, historic and scientific treasures, rare flora and fauna, and the headwaters of vital sources of water,” according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Politics
Elon Musk sued by SEC over late 2022 disclosure of Twitter stake
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk on Tuesday, alleging failure to timely disclose that he bought more than 5% of Twitter’s stock in 2022 before he took over the social media company.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington, accuses Musk — tapped by Trump to co-head a so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” — of violating federal securities law because of the late disclosure.
The litigation underscores the longstanding tension between Musk, who backed President-elect Donald Trump, and the U.S. government. The eccentric billionaire has clashed with the SEC before, including over what the agency described as false and misleading statements he had posted on Twitter about taking his other company, Tesla, private.
A federal jury in San Francisco in Feb. 2023 cleared Musk of claims by Tesla investors that he defrauded them.
Under federal law, Musk was required to disclose his stake in Twitter 10 days after he acquired more than 5% of Twitter’s stock in March 2022, according to the lawsuit.
Instead, Musk disclosed his stake in Twitter in April 2022, 11 days after the regulatory deadline. By then, the billionaire had bought more 9% of Twitter’s stock. Twitter’s stock jumped more than 27% over its previous day’s closing price after Musk made the disclosure.
“As a result, Musk was able to continue purchasing shares at artificially low prices, allowing him to underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due,” the lawsuit states.
The action also harmed investors who didn’t know about Musk’s stake and ended up selling their Twitter shares at low prices, the SEC alleges.
Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, said in a statement that “Mr. Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.” He accused the SEC of engaging in a “multi-year campaign of harassment” against the billionaire that “culminated in the filing of a single-count ticky tak complaint” against him.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler is stepping down Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. In December, Trump said he would nominate Paul Atkins, a cryptocurrency advocate, to lead the securities regulator.
Musk’s big stake in Twitter was an early sign in 2022 that he might buy the company, which was struggling to attract ad dollars and compete with larger social networks such as Facebook.
After trying to back out of buying the social media company for $44 billion, he completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Musk, who renamed Twitter to X and took the company private, said he bought the platform to promote free speech.
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