The interview starts at 02 tonight, and will be broadcast on X, which Elon Musk has owned for a couple of years now.
Musk officially endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy in July, and the interview is not expected to be of the harsher kind.
– You think that this will be a fairly easy interview for Donald Trump in that it will be on his half of the floor, but you don’t know what they will talk about yet, says TV4 Nyheternas reporter Roza Bicer on site from New York, i After five.
Criticism of the interview
She says that the interview has already been subject to a lot of criticism:
– There is a lot of talk about an owner of a social network taking a stand in this way and openly going out and backing a candidate. You see it as if X is not neutral anymore, that it becomes like a megaphone for right-wing extremism with this interview, but at the same time there is a lot of curiosity about this with two controversial figures and you wonder what the dynamics will look like.
– It’s an important interview for Trump because Harris leads in three important “swing states” and he hasn’t really got hold of her yet. With Musk having over 190 million followers on X, it will be widely spread, but it is unclear how it will land with the audience.
“There and screws in the algorithms”
Brit Stakston is a media strategist, and believes the duo will package the interview as the “real conversation” free from what they describe as traditional media’s slanted reporting.
However, she emphasizes that all 190 million of Musk’s followers are hardly Americans, and have the right to vote in the election.
– X is still a marginal platform where not all Americans are, she says.
“Naive to believe that”
Elon Musk has received a lot of criticism in recent days, where he has been accused of fueling the violent right-wing extreme demonstrations in Great Britain.
A former manager at X, for example, has called on the British government to impose sanctions on him.
– His defenders see him as the knight of freedom of expression, but that is naive because you see how he uses his power. During his reign at X, he has removed journalists who were critical, and ensured that content going to competing platforms receives an error message when clicked on. He’s there screwing up the algorithms, says Brit Stakston.