What’s the betting line on this challenge? 100:1 against? Those odds would likely still be too low.
During his conversation with Donald Trump, Elon Musk took a shot at the media coverage of Kamala Harris as “propaganda” designed to cover up her radical politics. He also ended up endorsing Trump, as I noted earlier. However, he also offered Harris equal access to the same vast community of voters … if she has the courage to take it.
Just how seriously does Harris take ‘equity’?
Happy to host Kamala on an 𝕏 Spaces too
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Newsweek apparently tried to get a comment from Team Kamala, but has yet to receive one. They instead collated some replies to Musk’s tweet (out of the 20,000 or so it attracted), but none of them offer much in the way of substantial response except those that say, “Don’t hold your breath.”
The campaign instead responded to the Guardian, but about the Trump interview rather than the offer of equal time:
The Harris campaign condemned the interview as an example of Trump’s “extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda”. Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said:
“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself – self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024.”
Sooo …
Naaah … there’s no chance that Harris joins Musk on Twitter/X. In the first place, Musk has already endorsed Trump — during the interview last night, and before that as well. Musk also contributes to a super-PAC to help Republicans turn out early voters this cycle. Trump might have the nerve to show up to outright hostile media platforms to make his case, such as the NABJ convention a couple of weeks ago, but Harris clearly doesn’t. She’s not even doing friendly media environments, not even pushovers like The View.
This would be less hostile than, say, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, or even Hugh Hewitt’s show on Salem Radio, although both would do their best to be at least polite. But Harris isn’t about to show up in a Twitter/X Spaces chat with Elon Musk, no matter how friendly he might be.
But it’s still fun to point out that Musk at least offered Harris the opportunity to connect to these voters — as well as to point out that Harris refused to do what Trump does naturally: answer questions. And not just on Twitter, but anywhere with anyone. Harris has not answered an adversarial question in public since being anointed the Democrat nominee, a span of 24 days and counting.
Harris and Walz do public rallies, of course, so it’s not a basement campaign … on their part, anyway. The press has apparently decided to keep itself in the Harris-Walz basement, content to have off-the-record chats while getting nothing in return except the satisfaction of making contributions-in-kind to the Harris-Walz campaign. Perhaps they know what we can surmise, which is that Harris can’t handle herself on the record any better than she has demonstrated over the past five years.
At some point — and it might be the debates — Harris has to speak for herself and show she can handle it. If she can’t handle an hour of adversarial questions from the press, how can she possibly handle America’s security and defense against its enemies, or even basic diplomacy? Twitter/X and Musk might not be the most favorable environment, but it’s practically a spa day compared to dealing with Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, as well as the United Nations, and even NATO and the EU.
As the old saying goes, it’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. Of course, if you’re going to follow that advice, you’d be a fool to run for national office. Not to mention gutless, which is no doubt the point Musk intended to make after the Trump chat.
