Politics
Trump returns to X, posting a flurry of messages ahead of interview with Elon Musk
Donald Trump returned on Monday to the social media platform X, more than three years after he was banned following his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, posting a rash of campaign videos ahead of a scheduled live X interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The former president’s return to his once-favored online soapbox — where he has a following of more than 88 million — offers him the opportunity to pitch his message directly to a vast swath of voters as he faces a tight race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Until Monday, Trump had posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter only once since Musk bought the site and reinstated his account in November 2022. But the GOP nominee is now struggling to regain campaign momentum as polls show his lead narrowing since President Biden stepped aside July 21 and endorsed Harris.
Musk, who will host the conversation with Trump, has more than 193 million X followers. For the Tesla chief executive, Trump’s return to X also provides an opportunity to revive his struggling social media platform and bolster its status as a central hub for political news.
Since Musk acquired X for $44 billion in 2022 and set about transforming its ethos and mechanics — slashing staff and cutting content moderation — the site has lost some followers and advertisers. It also faces heightened competition from rival platforms, such as ByteDance’s TikTok, Meta’s Threads and Truth Social, the site Trump launched in 2022 in response to his Facebook and Twitter ban.
Musk wrote on X that the 5 p.m. PDT interview would be “unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining.”
Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesman, dismissed the X event as a platform for lies, characterizing Trump and his “billionaire sugar daddy” as “infamous for their relationship with the truth.”
“After ignoring swing voters for 9 days and counting, an angry Trump is taking his backward agenda of hate and division to a Twitter conversation with fellow extremist Elon Musk,” Moussa said in a statement. “Elon, for his part, knows Trump is a man who he can do ‘business’ with, who can be bought, and who will give him vast tax handouts,” Moussa added.
Trump, who has long presented himself as the victim of persecution from the political and media elite, posted a flurry of posts Monday on X, starting witha 2½-minute campaign video that juxtaposed large crowds of his supporters alongside news reports of FBI agents searching his Mar-a-Lago estate and his prosecution by the Justice Department.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said in a voiceover. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it. The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead.”
Musk is likely to be an unorthodox interviewer.
A once-frequent Democratic supporter who backed Biden in the last presidential election, the entrepreneur has drifted rightward since 2020 and become a frequent troll of left-wing politics and what he dubs the “woke mind virus.” Last month, Musk spoke out against a new California law that prohibits mandating that teachers notify families about student gender identity changes and announced he’s moving X and SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas.
After the former president survived an assassination attempt at a Butler, Pa., rally a month ago, Musk said he “fully” endorsed Trump. He also helped set up a political action committee to financially support Trump’s campaign.
Over the last year, X has played a key role in the presidential campaign.
Last month, President Biden announced he was suspending his presidential campaign in a letter posted on X. A year ago, Trump himself used X when he skipped the first GOP presidential primary debate and sought to undercut his Republican opponents by appearing in a prerecorded interview with former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, which aired on X.
X, then Twitter, “permanently suspended” Trump’s account in 2021 after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the election.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter announced in a tweet.
A month after buying the platform in 2022, Musk asked the public: Should the former president’s social media account should be reinstated? Fifteen million people voted, and 51.8% were in favor or letting Trump return.
“The people have spoken,” Musk wrote, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.” “Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
Until Monday, Trump had posted only once on X since his page was reinstated. Last August, Trump posted a photo of his mug shot after he surrendered to authorities in Georgia on charges he conspired to overturn his the 2020 election. “Election interference,” the caption read. “Never Surrender!”
But he told Fox News he preferred to comment on Truth Social.
“I am not going on Twitter. I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News in April 2022. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”
Trump posted more frequently Monday on Truth Social than Twitter, sharing a stream of Breitbart stories, a New York Post front page, and personal rants characterizing Harris as a fraud who flip-flopped on policy.
But he has only 7.5 million followers on Truth Social. It’s not clear how loyal he will remain to the platform as his margins shrink in critical battleground states Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
The administration suggested an initial report of less-severe damage was already outdated as the president continued to defend his assertion that key facilities had been “obliterated,” though no intelligence official has yet directly echoed his view.
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Andrew Cuomo will likely drop out of the mayor’s race after his defeat against Zohran Mamdani, as his donors now question whether to support another candidate instead, sources told the New York Post.
It is almost certain the former New York governor will not run in the general election as an independent candidate because he sees no clear path to winning, insiders close to the Cuomo camp told the Post. Following the defeat, his backers are considering shifting their support to Eric Adams or another independent candidate.
ERIC ADAMS WARNS ZOHRAN MAMDANI IS A ‘SNAKE OIL SALESMAN’ AFTER DEM SOCIALIST’S NYC MAYORAL PRIMARY WIN
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a speech to supporters, acknowledges that rival Zohran Mamdani ‘won’ the New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)
“The understanding is he’s not running, every indication is that he doesn’t want to do it and the money wouldn’t be there even if he did want to do it,” one source said.
CUOMO CONCEDES IN NYC DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR MAYOR, CONGRATULATES AOC-ENDORSED MAMDANI
However, Cuomo told the Post Wednesday that he wanted to have a better understanding of what the general election looks like before he makes an official decision.
Maria Bartiromo, host of “Mornings with Maria,” also said during her show’s open on Wednesday that Cuomo may not be out of the race just yet.
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani takes the stage at his primary election party on Wednesday, June 25, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
“I spoke with the former governor, and he told me he is not ruling out running again in November,” Bartiromo said.
SCANDAL-PLAGUED FORMER GOV ANDREW CUOMO AIMS TO PULL OFF POLITICAL COMEBACK IN THE NATION’S BIGGEST CITY
In response to a question about Cuomo dropping out of the race, a spokesperson for his campaign also told Fox News Digital, “whoever is telling you that is clearly not talking to the Governor.”
Former New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo holds a rally on the eve of the primary, on June 23, 2025. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)
Cuomo conceded to Mamdani in Tuesday night’s New York City Democratic primary, acknowledging to supporters at an election night gathering that his opponent “won.”
“Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night, and he put together a great campaign,” Cuomo said Tuesday in front of supporters. “He touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote. He really ran a highly impactful campaign. I called him. I congratulated him. I applaud him sincerely for his effort.”
Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens, who is originally from Uganda, topped the former three-term governor and nine other candidates in a crowded primary field in an election that was determined by ranked-choice voting. He will be considered the frontrunner in November’s general election in the heavily blue city.
WASHINGTON — From June 6 to June 22, immigration enforcement teams arrested 1,618 immigrants for deportation in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security did not respond to requests for information on how many of those arrested had criminal histories and a breakdown of those convictions.
As immigration arrests have occurred across Southern California, demonstrators have protested the federal government’s actions and bystanders have sometimes confronted immigration officers or videotaped their actions. From June 6 to June 22, 787 people have been arrested for assault, obstruction and unlawful assembly, a DHS spokesperson said.
Figures about the Los Angeles operation released by the White House on June 11 indicated that about one-third of those arrested up until that point had prior criminal convictions.
The “area of responsibility” for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Central Coast, as well as Orange County to the south, Riverside County to the east and up the coast to San Luis Obispo County.
Data from the first days of the Los Angeles enforcement operation show that a majority of those arrested had never been charged with or convicted of a crime.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Monday that 75% of nationwide arrests under the Trump administration have been of immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges. But data published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that figure is lower in recent weeks.
Nationally, the number of people arrested without criminal convictions has jumped significantly and many of those are nonviolent offenders, according to nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute that covers the period from Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, to June 15. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.
Serious violent offenders account for just 7% of those in custody, according to the institute.
Immigration enforcement officers have recently intensified efforts to deliver on President Trump’s promise of mass deportations. In California, that has meant arrests of people in courthouses, on farms and in Home Depot parking lots.
But, with a daily goal of 3,000 arrests nationwide, administration officials still complain that agents are failing to arrest enough immigrants.
Democrats and immigrant community leaders argue that agents are targeting people indiscriminately. Despite the chaotic nature of the raids and protests in Los Angeles, 1,618 arrests by Homeland Security in Southern California over more than two weeks is about 101 arrests per day — a relatively small contribution to the daily nationwide goal.
Perhaps the bigger achievement than the arrests themselves, advocates say, is the fear that those actions have stoked.
Times staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.
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