Because WorldNetDaily is a all-but-official arm of the Trump campaign, it’s no surprise that it would slobber over Elon Musk’s interview with Donald Trump. WND kicked off the slobbering with an Aug. 12 article it reprinted from the discredited Gateway Pundit touting how “Trump tweeted a campaign ad ahead of his highly anticipated live interview with Elon Musk” under the headline that the ad “breaks the internet” despite offering no evidence any such thing happened. Joe Kovacs followed up with an article on the interview, in which he uncritically lets Musk whitewash his far-right activism:
In a lengthy conversation with two of the most influential people in the world Monday night, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk sounded the alarm to former President Donald Trump about a potential Kamala Harris victory in the 2024 presidential race, saying, “I think we’re in massive trouble with a Kamala administration.”
“It’s essential that you win for the good of this country and that’s understating my position,” Musk told Trump during the event on X, which is owned by Musk.
The pair discussed some of the hottest topics plaguing the nation, including the border disaster, the financial pain caused by inflation and an anemic economy, and what would happen to America should Democrats win the White House.
“You are the path to prosperity, and Kamala is the opposite,” Musk told Trump. “I’m just trying to tell people my honest opinion.”
“My track record has been moderate and if not moderate, slightly left” he said, noting it was “absurd” to think he was a right-wing activist.
“I call myself a moderate Democrat,” the Tesla chief explained, “But now I feel like we’re at a critical juncture for the country. … We’re gonna see an even further left administration with Kamala.
[…]Musk summarized what Americans are longing for, saying, “We want safe and clean cities we want secure borders, we want sensible government spending … stop the lawfare and, how are those even right-wing positions? Those are just common sense.”
Kovacs concluded with another bit of Musk propaganda: “The conversation was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, but was delayed for at least 45 minutes, with Musk saying a large Distributed Denial of Service attack on his platform prevented users from accessing his talk with Trump on time.” In fact, knowledgeable people point out that Musk is likely lying about that.
The next day, Bob Unruh hyped an inflated view count of the interview:
In the old days, there were a few major news publications that could attract the attention of millions. There were rare television events that maybe would draw tens of millions.
In today’s web world, millions of views are common, tens of millions happen, too.
There even are instances where there are more than that.
But a billion is a high water mark, and Elon Musk has confirmed that’s how many views were generated by his Monday night discussion with President Donald Trump.
He confirmed that combined views and subsequent discussions surpassed a billion, and the counting still was going on.
“Between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET, President Donald Trump’s Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump’s conversation on X, generating a total of 998 million views,” he added.
Note that Unruh framed this count as “confirmed” by Musk, even though no evidence has been released to back up that number. in reality, though, X’s view counts are so inflated as to be meaningless, as The Wrap detailed:
According to official X policies, which you can read here, “Anyone who is logged into X who views a post counts as a view, regardless of where they see the post (e.g. Home, Search, Profiles, etc.) or whether or not they follow the author. If you’re the author, looking at your own post also counts as a view.”
Translation: Even if you didn’t seek the post out, even if you didn’t even look at it for more than a couple of seconds, even if it popped up because you were looking for something else, if it crosses your screen you’ll add to the total views. And there’s good evidence that content Musk himself cares about is prioritized in the purportedly algorithmic “For You” timeline, making it more likely it will be seen even by people who didn’t seek it out.
And there’s more. The FAQ makes it clear “multiple views may be counted if you view a Tweet more than once.”
In short, X does not provide any detailed breakdown of activity pertaining to the view count, it’s just a tally of every single user who glanced at a post for any reason. Which makes it impossible to glean anything useful from that count.
Still, that bogus inflated number was too good to fact-check for certain Trump- and Musk fluffers. Andy Schlafly invoked the claim to bash Harris in his Aug. 13 column:
Elon Musk’s interview with Donald Trump on Monday has been viewed or heard a billion times. By comparison, the typical audience on Fake Tapper’s CNN is less than a million viewers.
“I heard them talk about the border extensively, and I heard them talk about the economy extensively. And that is why Trump resonates with so many people because he’s speaking to the issues,” the popular black podcaster Charlamagne tha God said about Trump’s interview.
Contrast that with Kamala Harris, who has gone seven weeks now without answering questions from the media. When Harris does speak, she makes stilted comments that avoid the real issues and instead resort to identity politics, as if harping on her gender and mixed race would make everyday Americans forget the abysmal record of the Biden-Harris administration.
The rest of Schlafly’s column was a lazy, biased rehash of the interview.