Highlights of the X Spaces event between Donald Trump and Elon Musk

For over two hours, before an audience of more than a million live viewers, the virtual meeting between Donald Trump and Elon Musk covered the most pressing domestic and international issues, all analyzed from the perspective of the former president and Republican candidate. Here are the key takeaways from the conversation between these two influential figures:

Delay due to a cyberattack

Elon Musk: Hello, everyone. So, my apologies for the late start. We unfortunately had a massive distributed denial-of-service attack against our servers and saturated all of our data lines, like basically hundreds of gigabits of data were saturated.

We think we've overcome most of that, and so it's now time to proceed. But as this massive attack illustrates, there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say. But I’m honored to have this conversation.

Attempted assassination attempt against Trump

E.M.: Well, thank you, maybe we could start off with, I mean, the assassination attempt, which was an incredible thing. And I have to say that, you know, your actions after that assassination attempt were inspiring. Instead of shying away from things, instead of ducking down, you were pumping your fist in the air and saying, fight, fight, fight. And I think that's, I mean, the president of the United States represents America. And I think that is America, that is strength under fire. But what was it like for you?

Donald Trump:  Not pleasant, I have to be honest. There was blood. I didn’t know I had that much blood. The doctors told me later that the ear is a very bloody place if you get hit. But in this case, it was probably the best alternative you could think of because it was at the right angle.

And it was a hard hit. It was very, I guess you could say surreal, but it wasn't surreal. You know, I was saying to somebody, you have cases like this or like much less than this where you feel like it's a surreal situation. And I never felt that. I knew immediately it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was in the ear. And because it hit very hard, but hit the ear. And I also heard people shout, "bullets, bullets, get down, get down". Because I moved down pretty nicely, pretty quickly.

We had bullets flying right over my head after I fell. So I'm glad I fell. We had bullets flying right over my head after I went down. So I'm glad I went down. The bigger miracle was that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter. And so it hit me at an angle that was far less destructive than any other angle. So that was the miracle. That was, for those people that don't believe in God, I think we gotta all start thinking about that.

You have to, you know, I'm a believer. Now I'm more of a believer, I think. And a lot of people have said that to me. A lot of great people have said that to me, actually. But it was amazing that I happened to be turned just at that perfect angle. And all because I put down a chart on immigration that showed that the numbers were so great. I love that chart even more now.

My first question was, because I heard bullets flying over me, I said, how many people died? Because we had a crowd there, tremendous, thousands and thousands of people. And there was no land. I mean, it was all people. So I said, how many people have been killed? Because I knew there were other shots. And they said, we don't know yet, but some people have been seriously injured.

Trump praises bravery of public and Secret Service agents

D.T.: One of the interesting things was that you didn't have anybody flee. You didn't have anybody stampede. Nobody, and there were some people behind me. They stood up, and they're looking like, you know, I mean, I'd say you want to have them in a foxhole with you. I want to meet some of those people, because it's so different from what you heard.

II was down, but the Secret Service guys, there were bullets flying right over my head. You could hear them go whizzing, and these guys came jumping on top of me, and a young lady, Kate, would jump. They moved so fast, and let me tell you, that took tremendous courage. Now, there was a lack of coordination. There was, you know, obviously everybody understands that somebody, that building should have been covered, and that was a big thing.

Trump stands up after being shot: 'I wanted them to know I was OK'

E.M.: Well, it was, I think your actions in the heat of fire, and, you know, like what I find admirable there was that you can't fake bravery under such circumstances. The courage is instinctual or it is not. It's not a rehearsed action. And so I just want to say that I think a lot of people admire your courage under fire there.

D.T.: I didn't think of it. I just wanted to get up and I wanted to stand up. I wanted to let people know, you know, I felt I was good when they were on top of me, covering me, actually, very much covering me and very bravely, but I wanted to get up. I said, I want to get up. And they wanted, you know, they have everything there. They have, they wanted stretcher. I didn't like the stretcher. And I knew I was hit in the ear, but I knew I wasn't hit anywhere else.

I want to get up. Let me get up. And so I got up and the crowd didn't know what to think. I mean, this was so, so many people and you could see they were confused. They didn't know what to think. And I wanted to let them know I was okay. It was very important for me to let them know that. And they went wild. You've seen the after, they didn't go wild when I got up because they didn't know, was I alive? You really couldn't tell. When I stood up before the hand, before the, you know, the fist in the air, they didn't know if I was alive. Nobody did.

And when I put the fist up, they were just relieved and happy and thrilled. And the place went crazy. It was pretty amazing.

"Illegal immigration saved my life"

E.M.: It was a terrible thing, but it was incredibly moving, yeah. Well, and I mean, speaking of the sort of slide that got you to turn, that saved your life really, was the illegal immigration slide. Maybe this is worth talking about, about that. It was, it was. That slide, that slide saved your life.

D.T.: Illegal immigration saved my life. You're right, but it had to be at that exact angle.

E. M.: I mean, that's a great one. Saved by illegal immigration.

D.T.: You know, the incredible thing though, when you talk about the odds, you had to be exactly at that angle. But the incredible thing is that the chart, I used it less than 20% of the time. It was just a moment.

Illegal Immigration

D.T.: Elon, the chart was just a chart that in my last week, we had the best illegal immigration numbers, meaning stopping. It was at the lowest. You've seen the chart. It's become quite a famous chart. But that was the lowest point ever recorded. It was a really, I mean, I was very proud of those numbers. And then you see what happened with these people. Kamala and Joe, you see what happened. They just let it go.

I had remain in Mexico policies. I had all these different policies that was so good. Guys like Tom Holman and Brandon Judd from Border Patrol. All these are all people that they've been on television. They says the best numbers we've ever had. We had so many different checks. Catch and release in Mexico, not the United. We had catch and release in the United States. We had it in Mexico.

I say it very simply. They have to come in legally. They have to be controlled. Because look, Because look, Kamala was the border czar. Now she's denying it. Everything that I do, she's saying she was strong on the border, we're gonna be strong. Well, she doesn't have to say it. She could close it up right now. They could do things right now.

These people are fake. Now they're also saying they did a good job on the border. We had the worst numbers in the history of the world, not of our country. There's never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this. We've had, I believe, and I think you believe this too. You know, you hear 12 million, 13.

Over 20 million illegals in the country "and many are terrorists."

I believe it's over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists.

And I'll tell you what, they're coming not just from South America. They're coming from Africa. They're coming from all over the world. They're coming from Asia. They're coming from the Middle East. They're coming from countries that are stupidly and horribly bombing Israel, October 7th. They're coming from all over the world. And you know, you look at, it's so sad, October 7th, because it should have never happened. It's so sad when you look at Ukraine. It should have never happened. We have a defective government. These are defective people, and they're not people that should be running it.

Kamala, "more incompetent" than Biden

But where you see it the best is the border, because you have millions of people coming in a month, and then she gets up and she tries to pretend like she's gonna do something. She had three and a half years. And by the way, they have another five months that they can do something, but they won't do anything. 

It's all talk. She's incompetent, and he's incompetent. And frankly, I think that she's more incompetent than he is. And that's saying something, because he's not too good.

Illegal immigration and crime, not letting the Police do their job

What's happening with crime? And our police are so good, but they're not allowed to do their job. But you have a lot of people that just shouldn't be, I think it's a much bigger number than you think. They're allowing, again, they're allowing people from their jails. And if you were running one of these countries where they're coming from, you would have had all of them.

As an example, Venezuela, their crime is down 72%. They're 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. 

E. M.: That’s what Castro did.

Yeah, well, he did, on a much smaller scale. You know, it was a much smaller scale. But this is a massive scale because this is being done worldwide. But here's what's happening.

Crime around the world is down. And wait until you see the numbers that we have. You know, this is migrant crime. This is the crime that's going to be, and I saw it today in New York where somebody was knifed, where they raped the girlfriend of a man who was there watching in New York in one of the shelters and he started pulling out the knives. And bad things happened today. But this happens every day. These are tough people. These are people who are in jail for murder and all kinds of things. And they are releasing them in our country.

Kamala could have closed the border without Biden: "He wouldn't have even known what happened."

And she takes care of that because now she's trying to say she had nothing to do with it. And she's a liar because she was named border czar on day one. And it was in the headlines of all the newspapers. She is the border czar. And she didn't even go there. She went to a place that had nothing to do with the problem.

She went in and out, I guess, because she was getting a lot of pressure. It had nothing to do with the problem. But she was the border czar. And people can't let them get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she's trying to say she wasn't really involved. And the whole thing is horrible. She was totally in charge. She could have closed the border without him. He didn't know what he was doing anyway. He wouldn't have even known what happened. You could close the border. He wouldn't even have known the difference.

But the fact is, she was a border czar. But you don't have to call her that. The fact is you could call her, she was in charge of the border and the border was the worst in history.

Another four years of open borders and "you don't have a country."

E.M.: Yes, I think this, frankly, I think this is a fundamental existential question for the United States. And if we have another four more years of open borders, and it's going to be even worse, with another four more years, it's going to be even worse than it's been in the last three and a half years. I'm not sure we have a country.

D.T.: You don't have a country, Elon. Elon, if they come in, you'll have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world, not just South America. You know, we think of South America, we think of Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, you know, all four. But it's not that, it's everywhere. They come from everywhere.

Biden was the victim of "a coup" by his own party and Kamala.

D.T: This was a coup against a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave. And they said, we can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way.

E.M.: Yeah, I mean, they just took him back behind the shed and basically shot him.

D.T.: Oh, what they did with this guy. And I'm not a fan of him. And he was a horrible president. The worst president in history. And one of the reasons he was so bad, first of all, the Israeli attack would never have happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine and we wouldn't have inflation. And we wouldn't have had the Afghanistan mess if you think about it. And we wouldn't have had Afghanistan. But think about it, you take away some of those events and we have a different world. We would also have no — inflation was caused by oil.

Putin, Xi and Kim Jong-un.

D.T.: Elon, I know each of them and I know them well. I know Putin, I know President Xi. I know Kim Jong-un of North Korea. I know every one of them. And let me tell you, people will say, oh, this is terrible. I'm not saying anything good or bad.They're at the top of their game. They're tough, they're smart, they're vicious, and they're going to protect their country. If they love their country, they probably do.

It's just a different form of love, but they're going to protect their country. But these are tough people at the top of their game. And when they see a Kamala, or when they see Biden, Sleepy Joe, they can't even believe it.

They can't believe this has happened. All this that they're seeing now, all the horror that, look at Israel. They're all waiting for an attack from Iran. Iran would not attack, believe me. You know, when I was there, and I say this with respect, because I think we would have been fine with Iran. I don't want to do anything bad to Iran, but they knew not to meddle.

Iran was broke, because I said to China, if you buy oil from Iran, it's all about the oil. That's where the money is. But if you buy oil from Iran, you won't do any business with the United States. And I meant it. And they said, we'll pass. They didn't buy oil.

The biggest threat to the world

D.T.: In the old days, we had the axis of evil. Here we have a modern axis of evil. These are powerful countries, very nuclear, which is the biggest threat. You know, the biggest threat is not global warming where the ocean is going to rise an eighth of an inch in the next 400 years, the big one, and you'll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming because we now have five countries that have significant nuclear power and we don't have to let anything happen with stupid people like Biden.

You know, Biden did something with Russia. There was no chance he was going to get in. And when I left, and after I left, they started building up big armies on the border with Ukraine, right? And I saw that and I thought he was doing it because Putin is a good negotiator. I thought he was doing it to negotiate. But then Biden started saying stupid things.

For example, he said it can be a NATO country. Now, Russia, as long as NATO has existed, has said, we're never going to agree to that. And we said it bluntly. And we did things and said things through this president with a low IQ, very low IQ. He had a low IQ 30 years ago, by the way, but now he may not even have an IQ. There's nothing on the board that's that low.

Biden may provoke World War II.

D.T.: It was so bad. The words he was using, the stupid threats that were coming from a stupid face he was using. I said, this guy is going to cause us to have a war. He's going to cause this. And let me tell you, it can lead to World War III. It can lead to World War III. The Middle East can lead. We have numerous places that could end up in World War III right now for no reason.

The disastrous economic management of the Biden-Harris Administration.

D.t.: But the most important thing right now is the economy, Elon. And as much as, I mean, I see nuclear power as the most important thing, but a lot of people don't understand that. But they don't have to.

If I understand it, that's all you need. Because if I were president, they wouldn't have that kind of problem. But what they're really angry about is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy. It's a disaster with inflation. Inflation, no matter what you make. Inflation has eaten you alive.

If you're a working person or a middle-income person, you can't afford it. Four or five years ago, people were saving a lot of money. Today, they are using all their money and borrowing money just to live. It's a horrible thing that's happening. And we will put an end to that quickly.

Energy policy

D.T.: We have to lower energy prices. Energy started with the price of gasoline. Now, your cars don't require too much gasoline, so they have a good, and they make a great product, I have to say, I have to be honest with you. That doesn't mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details. But their product is amazing. But gasoline, Elon, is the cost of energy.

Not just gasoline, it's the cost of heating your house and cooling your house. That's got to come down. It's gone up 100%, 150, and 200%, and that's got to come down. When it comes down, and we're going to drill, baby, drill. You know, they stopped drilling, and then they drilled again because they went back to Trump's policy. But if they were to win, the day after they get in office, this country is going to go down because they're going to go to an energy policy that's not sustainable.

Wind and different things, they're not going to have anything. And I know you're a big fan of AI, and I have to say AI, and this is shocking to me, but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything. So you're going to have to build, we're going to have to build a lot of power if our country is going to be competitive with China, because that's our main competitor for this AI thing. You're going to need a lot of electricity. You're going to need tremendous electricity, almost double what we produce now for the whole country, if you can believe it.

Instrumentalizing Justice against Trump.

D.T: Yeah. Well, we just won the big case in Florida. The Biden administration did something that's never been done in this country. And that is to go after their political opponent, me, with this nonsense and only nonsense. And the big case in Florida we won, but they always pick a judge and jury. And they use local prosecutors.

They use local attorneys general, like Fannie, you know, Fannie. It's spelled F-A-N-N-I, Fannie. And it's all a big scam. And it's all run from there. Like in Manhattan, one of the top people in the justice department came in and ran Manhattan, ran the state. The Letitia James deal was run by a justice department person, Biden.

They had never done this before. And they set a very bad precedent. It's called lawfare, warfare. It's a terrible thing. And it's never happened in our country. It happens in banana republics and third world countries, but it's never happened.

And the amazing thing is that it actually made my numbers go up because people see, you know, fortunately I have a platform like you, or, you know, to be fair, like a conversation like this, where I can talk about it and people get it. I mean, you fight for electoral integrity and you end up getting indicted because you fight for electoral integrity. And when the day comes that you can't fight for electoral integrity, you don't have a country anymore.

So what happens, what happens is that they, when after their political opponent, I, now Biden is, you know, close to the vegetable stage, in my opinion. Well, I looked at him today on the beach and I said, why would anybody allow that? The guy could barely walk, why would anybody allow him, does he have a political advisor who thinks this looks good? You know, he thinks this looks good because it looks so bad and it's ridiculous.

I mean, and he's been doing that for a long time. You know, he can't lift the chair. The chair weighs about three ounces. It's made for kids and old people to lift. And he can't lift it. It's crazy.

Building a false image of Kamala.

E.M.: No, I mean, obviously what's happening overnight is they're rewriting history and making Kamala sound like a moderate when she's actually far left, like far, far left.

D.T.: Worse than Bernie Sanders. She is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She's a radical leftist lunatic. And if she's going to be our president very quickly, you're not going to have a country anymore. And she'll go back to all the things she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero. Now all of a sudden she's saying, no, I'll do it, I really want to see fracking. The day, if they get in, the day she gets in, she will end fracking.

And by the way, if people didn't think that, the lunatics who really believe that, they wouldn't vote for her. You know, like the Palestinians and Israel, she's so anti-Israel and she's bad for both. Biden actually did something that was impossible. Both sides hate it, you know, both sides. That was a hard thing to do, unification.