Pennsylvania played a significant role in Trump’s interview with Musk

Elon Musk told former President Donald Trump that his “strength under fire” during the attempted bombing in Butler, Pennsylvania, played a role in the billionaire’s decision to support the former president.

“Your actions during the assassination attempt were inspiring… instead of avoiding things, instead of ducking, you shot first in the air and said, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’” – Musk he said during Monday night’s interview with Trump on X Spaces, the latest example of Trump favoring social media as a campaign tool.

Pennsylvania was the star of the first part of Musk and Trump’s two-hour social media conversation.

The discussion, which began 42 minutes late due to technical difficulties experienced by X, was an opportunity for Trump to discuss, among other things, the assassination attempt and his promise to return to Butler in October.

It also allowed Trump to make false accusations about Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats in a setting where his often rambling comments have gone unchecked and have faced little pushback from Musk, who has his own history of spreading misinformation on an app he bought in 2022.

“It’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length,” Trump said at one point in the conversation, which Musk intended to distinguish from a “confrontational interview.”

Musk made his support Trump on July 13, shortly after the failed assassination attempt that evening. Musk has previously supported Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden’s 2020 bid for the White House, and on Monday evening said he once “stood in line for six hours to shake [former President Barack] Obama’s hand.” However, in recent years, Musk has repeatedly the rhetoric proclaimed which is closely associated with Trump and right-wing political movements.

Here’s what Trump said about Pennsylvania during his call with Musk and what may have caused the launch delay.

Trump recalls details of Butler shooting

Musk asked Trump about the Butler bombing attempt. “Unpleasant,” Trump replied.

“I didn’t know I had that much blood. The doctors later told me the ear is a place that bleeds a lot if you hit it,” Trump said.

As he did at his last Pennsylvania rally in Harrisburg on July 31, Trump told Musk how he turned his head to a chart that showed “migrant encounter numbers,” according to ABC News analysisBy presenting the chart, Trump looked away from the upcoming shooting, perhaps avoiding a more earnest or fatal injury.

“Illegal immigration saved my life,” Trump said, referring to the content of a chart he presented at Butler.

Trump was amazed that when he was hit and ducked behind the podium, rallygoers did not leave his side. “They saw that I was hurt, they saw a lot of blood, and they saw that I went down, and it was almost like they wanted to be with me,” Trump said.

Trump added that Secret Service agents who surrounded him after the attack wanted to take the former president out on a stretcher, but Trump said he refused. standard.

The former president also mentioned Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter who was fatally shot at the rally while shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, as well as two men, David Dutch of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver of Moon Township, Pennsylvania, who were wounded.

Trump said Corey was “a firefighter, a great gentleman, a great Trump supporter.”

Trump says he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, in October

Trump told Musk he plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, in October. The comments come a little more than two weeks after Trump posted on Truth Social that he would return to the city to hold a rally in honor of Comperatore and the two wounded men. He did not provide further details.

When Trump first announced his plans to return to Butler, Jondavid Longo, the mayor of nearby Slippery Rock, who attended the rally, said Trump’s return “will play a critical role in healing our community and elevating our name above the ugliness of July 13th” and that the former president’s supporters would not be deterred from attending.

The GOP candidate has visited Pennsylvania six times in 2024, most recently at a rally at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg in slow July, his first return to the commonwealth since the assassination attempt. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday.

Why did Musk’s conversation with Trump start so slow?

Before Musk and Trump could begin their conversation by discussing the attempted coup, Musk said the platform was experiencing “massive DDoS attack”, which prevented many users from accessing X Space.

DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service, occur when legitimate users are prevented from accessing IT systems, devices, or networks due to a “malicious cybercriminal” According to to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Target networks are flooded with activity during the attack, making them inaccessible to legitimate users.

Musk has I’ve had technical issues with X Spaces before with politicians, but the rest of the site worked normally and The Verge reports There was no DDoS attack Monday evening, according to a source at the company. Another source told the source that there was a “99 percent chance Elon was lying about the attack.”

Musk reported to X that “we tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today” and said on the call, after the issues had seemingly been resolved, that “the massive attack shows there is a lot of resistance to people simply listening to what President Trump has to say.”