We fact check some of Trump’s most outrageous claims.
Considering Donald Trump was once suspended from X — then Twitter — “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after the Capitol riot, he found a very sympathetic ear in the platform’s new owner.
After a 40-minute delay due to technical issues, Elon Musk interviewed Trump live on X, offering up softball questions that gave him ample opportunity to attack Vice President Kamala Harris, repeat his false election claims, and call the criminal cases against him a “conspiracy” cooked up by the Biden administration.
We’ve got more on the conversation more than a million X users reportedly tuned in to — plus a quick fact-check on a few of Trump’s outrageous claims.
Musk sets a conversational tone
Early on in the interview, Musk — who, like Trump, has often expressed contempt for the mainstream media — said he wasn’t interested in an “adversarial” interview, but simply intended to help “open-minded, independent” voters “catch a vibe.”
“I want to emphasize it’s a conversation, and it’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation,” he added. (Sidenote: Musk has endorsed Trump in the presidential race.)
Trump said he was grateful to Musk for giving him the space to share his views “at length.” He also said that Tesla cars were “great,” a significant turnaround from his previous views on electric vehicles.
Toward the end of the interview, Musk claimed that he’d “not been very political before,” self-describing as “moderate, if not moderate, slightly left,” voter. He added that viewers who feel the same way should back Trump.
Musk’s welcoming demeanor gave Trump a handy chance to amplify his claims that Kamala Harris is avoiding the press — and pitch himself as a candidate who’s happy to take questions (though crucially in this case, his answers went almost universally unchallenged).
Trump claims that “illegal immigration saved his life”
Trump talked freely about last month’s assassination attempt. At one point, he joked that “illegal immigration saved my life” because he’d turned to show his audience a chart on the subjects moments before the gunman opened fire.
He added that the experience had made him “more of a believer” in God — but didn’t discuss Corey Comperatore, the attendee who did lose his life in the attack.
Trump’s claims about crime and inflation
Trump offered up a fair few suspect statistics and statements throughout the conversation. At one point, he claimed “our crime rate’s going through the roof” — though in actuality, property crime and violent crime both went down substantially last year and at the beginning of this year.
Per CNN, crime data expert Jeff Asher said earlier this year that if murder rates dropped at least 10 percent between 2022 and 2023, it would represent the fastest U.S. decline “ever recorded.”
On inflation, Trump opined, “I think we have the worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years. They say it’s 48 years; I don’t believe it.”
This is wildly inaccurate. The highest inflation the Biden administration has seen was 9.1 percent in June 2022. It was the highest in 40 years, however, it’s decreased substantially since and was about 3 percent in June — its lowest level in more than three years.
Trump claims Harris wants to “release all the prisoners” in detention
Trump told Musk that as president, Kamala Harris “wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention, and some of these guys are really bad. That just came out today.”
That is inaccurate. Fox News did report on Monday that Harris once “pledged to close immigration detention centers ‘on day one,'” — but that referred to her 2019 campaign for president, not this one. Also, she was talking about privately-run detention centers, not all of them.
Trump’s other claims on immigration
Unsurprisingly, Trump had a lot more to say about immigration. He made his usual attacks on Harris, claiming that she “was the border czar, and people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign.” He added: “She was totally in charge.”
This wasn’t the case. Harris never had the title of “border czar.” The border has remained under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, while Harris assumed a more limited diplomatic role.
Trump also claimed that the U.S. is being subjected to a rise in immigration courtesy of Venezuela Venezuela “emptying” its prisons into the U.S. — an assertion he’s made before.
“Taking their drug dealers… They’re taking – frankly, their prisoners, they’re emptying out their prisons. They’re taking their criminals, their murderers, their rapists, and they’re delivering them…” he said.
Though many citizens have left Venezuela thanks to its turbulent political situation, there’s no proof that the country has deliberately funneled its criminals into the U.S.
Trump also claimed that “millions” of illegal immigrants are entering the U.S. every month, which is simply untrue. The highest nationwide number of “border encounters” — which do not translate into entries into the U.S. — was 370,890 in December 2023.
Trump’s claims on Iran and terror groups
Trump repeated an old assertion that Iran had “no money” to fund terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah during his presidency. Though his sanctions on the country did cause an economic decline — which had a knock-on effect on funding militant groups — experts told CNN in June that it never completely stopped.
Trump also repeated his usual falsehoods about the 2020 election, and alleged that several criminal cases against him were acts of sabotage by the Biden administration. In fact, none of the prosecutors in these cases report to the Biden administration.
Musk allowed Trump’s claims to go unchallenged, often voicing agreement or praise. Unfortunately for Musk, the delay in starting the interview — which he attributed to “a massive DDOS attack” — threatened to overshadow their discussion.
