So I want to bring in our political experts to break all of this down. And Warren Townsend, let me start with you. Was it a mistake for Trump to do this conversation with Elon Musk?
I think the biggest problem with Donald Trump is the length of time he devotes to some of these interviews. I agree with what the reporting was just saying, that it's really important that you go reach voters where they are. And frankly, they're not on cable news anymore.
They're on these streaming platforms. They're on the podcasts. They're on some of these other channels, and it's important to diversify how you're reaching the masses. But he lets them go on too long, and then he diverges off message. Two hours is much too long for any sort of interview to go.
And I think that's the discipline aspect that we see that he was pretty good at keeping earlier in the campaign, and he's losing a little bit now that he has a new opponent. So hopefully he tightens this up going forward. Essie Cupp is with us as well. Essie, we also heard Trump attacking Kamala Harris as, quote, not being smart, not smart, his words.
How does that play with independent and women voters specifically? Yeah. Surprise, surprise.
Attacking a woman on her looks, litigating her race, telling people she's stupid or not smart. That doesn't win over women voters. And that's not a campaign strategy. That's that's a crisis of confidence.
That is someone who doesn't yet know how to handle Kamala Harris, someone who doesn't know how to attack her on policy. He is still running in his mind against. Joe Biden. And you heard that in that interview with Elon Musk, how he was almost pining for Biden to be back on the ticket.
He cannot quit him. And so for Kamala, he has not figured this out yet. And in these crucial swing states, these battleground states where you have independent voters, moderate voters, a lot of women voters, they are not interested in the petty personal attacks.
They want solutions to problems, and he's not offering them. Thank you. The split in Trump world is somewhat spilling into public view today as allies and advisors debate whether the former president is helping or hurting his campaign by doing events such as last night's interview with Elon Musk. Today, some of Trump's team and even the former president himself are touting massive viewership numbers with Musk claiming his event with Trump last night reached one billion people. But other Trump allies are questioning the decision and new backlash caused by one specific part of the interview.
could fuel them to push Trump even harder to avoid interviews like this ahead of November's election. Let's get straight to CNN's Kristen Holmes and Eva Mcken. Kristen, it's an interview that had tens of millions of listeners, viewers, I think more than a billion impressions, according to X. That's real publicity, that is real reach. Why exactly are some Trump allies skeptical about the decision to do it?
Well, Phil, two hours with Elon Musk and Donald Trump is bound to leave you with some questions about what exactly they are talking about and bound to see Donald Trump off message, which is exactly what you saw last night. Sure, they did get that enormous amount of views. But if you're talking to allies who are close to Donald Trump, who want to see him win in November, they want to see him win by focusing on the issues. That's the only way they believe he can.
Now, the other problem with a two hour. meandering kind of conversation, not really interview, is that it leaves room for people to make mistakes, which is what we are potentially seeing today after these remarks from Donald Trump. You're the greatest cutter.
I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit? They go on strike.
I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's OK, you're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone.
Essentially talking there about firing workers who are threatening to strike. Now, the United Auto Workers has hit back. They have fired federal labor charges against both Musk and Donald Trump. It is illegal to fire anybody who is threatening to unionize or threatening to quit or to strike, excuse me.
But you can see why there might be some issues with that, particularly as Donald Trump has tried to reach out to the rank and file union members. Now, he would argue and his team would argue that they instead would. are trying to reach those voters through the economy. And here's what his team had to say about those federal labor charges.
They issued a statement saying, this frivolous lawsuit is a shameless political stunt intended to erode President Trump's overwhelming support among American workers. They go on to say Democratic special interest bosses may lie and stoke fear to try and stop President Trump from creating the broadest coalition of any candidate in history. But rank and file workers and their families know the truth.
It is important to note that UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris and that the head of UAW, Sean Fain, and Donald Trump have a very toxic relationship, is a light way to put it, as Donald Trump has continued to lash out at him after he endorsed Biden. That might be a little bit of an understatement. Yes. Eva, obviously, we assumed the Harris campaign was going to be quick to criticize the event.
They certainly did, calling Trump and Musk, quote, self-obsessed rich guys. Now it seems like they would be looking to capitalize on those comments about unions. They certainly are. It is curious as to why the former president made this choice to flirt with this idea of immediately firing striking workers.
But he has always viewed himself as aligned with union workers and at odds with union leadership, although these comments appear to be chastising the workers themselves. But Democrats are eager to frame the contest in these terms. On the campaign trail, Harris and Walz routinely characterize themselves as fighting for the American worker. Walz himself, a longtime union guy from his career as a teacher, the campaign elevating the comments, eager to do so, saying that Trump praises billionaire Elon Musk for firing workers who are striking for better pay and working conditions.
And we're hearing Walz talk about this before a union today. Let's listen. Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance, they see the world very differently than we do. The only thing those two guys knows about working people is how to work to take advantage of them. He spent a decade stiffing service workers from dishwashers, waiters and carpenters on his own properties to enrich himself.
As president, he cut overtime benefits for millions of workers and he opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage. And Phil, this comes as the Harris campaign is slated to roll out. their economic policy vision that they say will focus on tackling inflation and bringing down costs. Phil. All right.
Eva McKen, Kristen Holmes, never a dull moment on the campaign trail. Thank you guys so much. I want to bring in the panel. Michael, UAW reacted swiftly.
Kristen was talking about it to those Trump comments saying, quote, illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity. such as strikes, saying that's what Musk and Trump were doing there. I don't know that what they filed will have a major effect. AFL-CIO very quickly coming out in support of that. You saw Tim Walz speaking as well.
The battle for the rank and file, which the Trump campaign was talking about, that is real and tangible and more so than any Republican has ever competed in that space. I mean, even the president said that a lot of his members were going to vote for the former president. We've seen the movement. since 2016, this sort of realignment. So how is this not an unforced error?
Well, look, I mean, I think for many of those voters who are members who look at Donald Trump as being more representative of talking directly to their plight as working class white voters, we'll probably stick with him anyway. I mean, I think the whole idea of like the Make America Great Again movement for a lot of people is to go back to a moment in time where they felt financially secure. You can work 40 hours, 60 hours a week.
You can afford a home. You can afford to put your kids through college or through a trade program if you so chose. That's no longer the choice for a lot of middle class or average working class people. So despite what occurred the other day, I think a lot of those individuals will have that in mind and will still probably vote for him in November anyway. Actually, this has been kind of the paradox of this administration.
President Biden, since he's the most pro-labor president in history, his resume backs that up in terms of what they've actually done. This is also a moment where labor has more power than they've had in decades. And we've seen it with strikes, with union negotiations. And yet rank and file is a problem for Democrats. Yeah, this is an opportunity for the Harris campaign to go to the conventions like I asked me where Tim Walz is, but also to go to the union halls where rank and file members spend their time having conversations, go to the line.
Where people are working and putting, and many times, their lives in danger for factory jobs, whether it be in chicken plants, and during COVID we saw people being put at risk, or whether it be on the automotive line. Here's the thing in the opportunity that the Harris campaign is that, I hear Sher Michael, people are suffering. But the reality is, is that the Donald Trump presidency is what gets you a Janus decision in the Supreme Court that makes unions. Not as strong as they could possibly be.
That is the conservative principle. The Donald Trump vision is that you don't get to strike. You don't get to have collective bargaining to dismantle. And if the Harris campaign can connect the dots of like, we want you to have a better quality of life, but we also want to protect the way you get the quality of life, and that is having good union jobs. This guy does not want that.
He just wants corporate greed. There's opportunity, but they have to get into the places where those rank and file members are. Phil, I mean, look, that's a really good point that Ashley's making, and I've long been of the position, Ashley, that as we see this realignment of voters sort of moving towards the Republican Party, these working class voters, the party is going to have to at some point start to change a lot of its previous policy positions to sort of meet this new voting bloc that's going to obviously carry the party into power in the future.
Which is fascinating because the first Trump administration did not. Yeah, yeah. If you look at what the agencies were actually doing, they largely aligned with traditional Republican. Republican Orthodoxy where Trump's comments last night probably wouldn't have gotten him in trouble at all with traditional Republican Orthodoxy unions.
Yes, I mean the broader context of this is that we've been witnessing for a long time with an accelerating pace the dismantling of the FDR coalition where the white working class was part of the Democratic coalition, strong labor unions often in collusion with the government, were the dominant source of funding and organization for the Democratic Party. As our politics has moved more towards cultural stuff rather than economic interests, more towards Elizabeth Warren and less towards Bernie Sanders, to use shorthand, you see how the rank and file have moved away. At the same time, I think this was obviously an unforced error.
I mean, Michael might be right that it won't make that much difference in the long run. I think the lawsuit is frivolous, unconstitutional nonsense. as a signaling thing to be being chummy with Elon Musk, who's the only major car manufacturer in the country that is not unionized and who has very anti-union feelings, some of which I sympathize with, is just not a great signaling from Donald Trump. And so I think the Democrats are smart to seize on this.
And it was a silly thing to do the Twitter interview or X interview in the first place. Which, by the way, is part of the origin story of why Musk and the Biden administration hate one another on some level was because of the union issue. I ask you...
Sean Fain, who led the UAW negotiations, got them a lot of things and really held out a lot longer than I think even some in the Biden administration wanted him to. There has been that split between where leadership was and where rank and file was. Has he brought it closer together? I think he's going to have to continue to bring it closer together. Look, I was a part of a teacher's union when I was in school.
I come from Youngstown, Ohio, like it's a union labor area. People are allowed to have differences of opinions. Just when you're in a union, it doesn't make you a Democrat or Republican.
But what Sean Fain is doing and what I think the Harris campaign is doing is making it clear, like, you can still be a Republican and know that this guy is not actually for your support. And so pushing the Democrats to continue to be pro-labor is important. I will just say, though, when Republicans who support Donald Trump are actually read his policy positions that are in labor unions, They're disgusted by them.
They can't believe that this might be the guy. And so that's why I'm saying like getting in the streets, organizing, door knocking could really pull some of those voters away in those labor towns. Especially Michigan. Michigan, Pennsylvania. Yeah, they matter a little bit.
All right, guys. Nevada. Nevada matters just a little bit. So Dana, you know this from what appears to be such the central angle for Elon Musk. You pointed out in your latest reporting that the top three states in the United States that sell EVs are all reliably blue.
Reliably blue, I mean, to state the obvious, California, Washington, Colorado now. 20% of all cars sold in those states are EVs. The bottom three are the red states, and less than 2% of those cars are EVs. So is there a link?
Does Musk going all in on MAGA impact his bottom line? Does it cost him votes in those blue states? Well, I think that there's sort of two things at play here, right? First of all, Musk is a donor to Trump's reelection campaign. I think a lot of people are kind of missing the fact that Musk started a super pact called America Pack, and he has pledged millions of dollars to help Trump get reelected.
In return, Trump is going on X, which is the media platform that Musk owns. And Musk is very... eager to have more folks on that platform. So it's like a mutually beneficial arrangement between the two.
But to your point, there is a sense that, you know, the electric vehicle market is kind of saturated in places like California, you know, Tesla, Tesla's global, like California accounts for 12% of Tesla's global sales right now. And if you live in California and wanted to buy a Tesla, you probably already have one. Like there aren't that many fence sitters left.
But we live in a very vast country and there are lots of states in the middle of the country, you know, red states, as you pointed out, where the EV adoption curve looks quite different. And if Musk can get Trump to kind of support Tesla and kind of make a pitch for Tesla cars in the rest of the country, I mean, I think that that is an upside for him. Well, and you know what's amazing, though, is, you know, Biden has loved EVs. You've got the $7,500 credit to buy an EV.
That's why a lot of these were sold. Car plants are being converted to EVs, all because this is something Biden supports. Trump doesn't.
I mean, here's what Trump has said about EVs. To further protect Michigan autoworkers, I will end the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate on day one. Who wants to drive an electric car for the rest of your life?
Does anybody? You don't want to drive for 45 minutes and then stop for three hours. Is that what you say?
They have so many electric vehicles, nobody wants to buy them. They're expensive. So I mean, does he stick with that?
Or is Musk literally backing Trump, even though it would be bad for Musk? Well, I think if you listen to their two hour conversation last night, I mean, Musk was definitely sort of pitching Tesla cars to Trump. He made a lot of points that listen, like our cars are sexy, they drive well, they're fun.
Like Trump was sort of chiming in like. Maybe you should put solar panels on the roof. I mean, I think that Musk was using the opportunity to kind of make the case that Tesla cars are not that bad. And I think you've seen Trump kind of lower the temperature of his rhetoric when it comes to Tesla. I mean, he still sort of slams EVs as a whole, but will say things like, well, Musk, you know, Elon, you've got an incredible product.
All right. Well, Dana, thank you very much. I appreciate it. My pleasure.
I want to dig deeper right now with our panel of experts. Doni Sullivan, you're an expert. Take us inside how Elon Musk turned X, formerly known as Twitter, into a pro-Trump machine promoting disinformation and hate speech in the process. Hey, Wolf. Yeah, look, I mean, we shouldn't pretend that X or Twitter, as it was formerly known, was ever this kind of haven of just, you know, great conversation and no hate and no misinformation.
It always had its problems. But really, the transformation of this platform, and still such a hugely important and influential platform, both in the U.S. and around the world, under Musk, it has just been incredible. Of course, after January 6th, Trump had been suspended from Twitter, as had many election conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and other people who were sharing hate on the platform.
Musk basically brought them all back. When it comes to Musk himself, he has... gone down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
He himself, he is also, as well as being the owner of the platform, he has the most followers on the platform, 190 million followers. And what we've seen over the past few weeks, especially, is Musk really pushing totally discredited conspiracy theories about voting machines and also this conspiracy theory that is becoming popular on the far right and in MAGA circles that undocumented people will vote en masse for Democrats. in November. That is false. There is no evidence for that whatsoever.
But that is something that Musk is pushing. So you can really see, you know, just in terms of bringing characters like this back and pushing these lies himself, Musk has totally transformed this platform. Kristen Holmes, I know you've been talking to Trump's allies and advisors who have actually had some mixed reactions to that conversation with Elon Musk last night. What can you tell us?
Well, when you talk to his campaign advisors, they explain a situation that they believe is true about the race in November, which is that whoever wins, whether it be Harris or Donald Trump, it's going to be decided by a thin margin. And part of what they are trying to do is to expand the electorate in favor of Donald Trump. And that means reaching out to what they call persuadables.
Voters, people they believe, would lean right, but wouldn't engage in politics in a traditional sense. They're not going to watch the news, they're not going to potentially watch a press conference or a rally, but they are going to watch, at least potentially, an interview with Elon Musk. Or they are going to potentially watch a...
interview with Biden Ross, which is something that he did two weeks ago. These are things that Donald Trump's team are trying to promote to reach this group of non-traditional voters, to bring them to the polls in November. So from that standpoint, they believe it was great because they're talking. about the viewership and how many people tuned in and how it reached so many people. But when you talk to a number of Trump's allies, there's still a lot of concern about the fact that he's not doing the traditional campaigning, particularly at this time when we're seeing this boost in polls for Kamala Harris, this boost in enthusiasm.
around Kamala Harris, it is fundamentally a different race. And what they want to have Donald Trump be doing is being out there on the campaign trail, talking about policy issues, talking about the economy, talking about immigration. These are issues that Donald Trump has consistently pulled ahead of Joe Biden on and issues that they believe that he will pull ahead of Kamala Harris on if he continues to focus on them.
But instead, you get these kind of meandering two-hour interviews that leave a lot of room for Donald Trump. to go off script and sometimes in a way that could be detrimental to him with these voters. So that's why you see a split between the advisers and the allies on what exactly Donald Trump is doing to reach voters. Jasmine Wright is with us as well.
Jasmine, Harris's team trolled Trump on Trump Social after that glitch on X, reposting his own words from 2023 about Ron DeSantis. And I'm quoting now. Wow.
DeSantis Twitter launch is a disaster. The whole campaign will be a disaster. Watch. That was what Trump said about DeSantis when he was on that Twitter exchange after he announced his candidacy. is facing criticism for not sitting down for more interviews at the same time?
And is that a liability for her? Yeah, well, if I think that the vice president is facing criticism for not sitting down, but it's important to point out where that criticism is coming from. It's coming from us in the media. Obviously, we are people who like to sit down with folks in power to ask some tough questions, something that we feel is within our guidance as journalists. And it's also coming from the Trump campaign, who want her to sit down because they believe in a lot of ways that maybe.
Maybe she makes mistakes in those unscripted moments, trying to kind of put her in a place where she could look bad or she could have a bad interview. Something that has happened in the past, particularly, we know that first interview with Lester Holmes, her first year as vice president. But because of that is where that critique is coming from, the media and the Trump. I think that's why you're seeing the vice president's campaign really kind of wave it off, dismiss it, because they aren't hearing those same concerns or wishes for her to sit.
down and do an interview or a press conference from the American voters, who they are very much so focused on right now. And they're not hearing it also from the other elected Democratic officials, something that we heard after President Biden did his debate in June. They obviously wanted him to sit down to show that cognitively he could take the case and make the case against Trump. And so I think that those are two of the reasons why we haven't seen her yet and why we may not even see her before the convention.
We know when asked last week when she would do an interview, she said that she had talked to her team about it and that they were looking before September. So that's a couple of weeks from now, obviously, after the convention. But I think that those are the two main factors in their kind of decision making. Good, good point. Doni, as Kristen pointed out just a little while ago, Trump is trying to appeal to nontraditional audiences.
You spend a lot of time in this ecosystem. How far of a reach did he have? I mean, I think they'll be pretty disappointed with. that number last night of only a million listeners on X, given how much Musk was touting the reach of this.
But you're right, Wolf. I think that we are in a majorly different media environment, social media ecosystem environment, this election cycle than we were last time. And a lot of that actually has to do... After January 6th, a lot of people, including Trump, but a lot of his supporters too, were kicked off the major social media platforms.
Now, a lot of them, of course, have been put back onto those platforms. But what that allowed for was really this creation of a whole alternate universe of social media platforms like... Trump Social, but there's many others out there. And lots and lots and lots of Americans, millions of Americans are getting their news information and misinformation from those platforms.
Yeah, a lot of misinformation. Kristen, let me play one part of Trump's conversation that angered labor leaders in the U.S. Listen to this.
You're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit?
They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's okay. You're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone.
The UAW filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk in reaction to that. Is there any concern inside the Trump campaign about that? Well, look, they put out a statement saying that this was a political stunt and that it was basically fraudulent, that they didn't need to be filing these labor charges and were only doing so because of politics.
And of course, as we will know, UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris. They had endorsed President Joe Biden. And on top of that, the head of UAW, Sean Fain, and Donald Trump have had nothing but negative things to say about each other publicly for the last several months, if not.
years. So it's not surprising that the two are at each other. And obviously, the concern would be for the rank and file members, because Donald Trump's team and Donald Trump himself, to an extent, know that they're never going to get union leadership behind Donald Trump. He is, if you talk to any labor expert, not a pro-labor president.
But What they have tried to do is reach out to those working class voters, to those rank and file union members. And to some extent, they have been incredibly successful. Even if you ask some of these labor union leaders, they will admit to you that the rank and file often sides with Donald Trump. And that is something that could be of a concern with these comments. But when you talk again about labor in general, Donald Trump is not necessarily pushing a pro-labor agenda.
But what he's pushing is a change in the economy. And he believes that reaching out to these working class voters. he can reach them by talking about inflation, by talking about the price of groceries, by talking about the price of gasoline at the pump.
And that's how he thinks that they will be getting these kind of voters. Now, obviously, again, this could hurt him with them, but that's not entirely the platform he's running on that he would be pro-labor 100%.