The European Union issued a stark warning to X owner and executive chairman Elon Musk before his live-streamed X interview with former U.S. president Donald Trump –and received an expletive-filled response.
On Monday night, Trump and Musk had a conversation marred by technical issues that caused a 40-minute-plus delay and was widely described as rambling. It featured some of the Republican presidential hopeful’s key talking points, including his recent brush with death and his anti-immigration views. Among other things, he told Musk that there were many “rough people” attempting to enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico.
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In between a series of attacks on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Trump called her “beautiful” on the cover of Time magazine and likened her to his wife Melania. “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great First Lady, Melania.”
Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as being at the “top of their game.”
He also told Musk, who could be heard laughing through many sections of the interview, that if he loses the election, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” The post sharing the interview on Trump’s account had more than 130 million views as of 5:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday.
The EU’s commissioner for internal market, Frenchman Thierry Breton, had posted an open letter to the X founder and tech mogul on Monday asking that he censor his interview with Trump to avoid “the amplification of harmful content.” Breton said Musk, who bought the platform in 2022, has a legal obligation to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) and fight the spread of misinformation as the man in charge of the platform used by over 300 million people worldwide.
“With great audience comes greater responsibility #DSA,” Breton wrote on X in posting the letter. “As there is a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in connection with events with major audience around the world, I sent this letter to @elonmusk.” Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X (formerly Twitter), was copied.
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) August 12, 2024With great audience comes greater responsibility #DSA
As there is a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in 🇪🇺 in connection with events with major audience around the world, I sent this letter to @elonmusk
“As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU,” Breton continued in his letter. Any “negative effect of illegal content” could lead the EU to take further action against X and Musk, using “our full toolbox, including by adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from harm.”
Musk replied to Breton’s letter with a meme that said: “Take a big step back and literally, f*ck your own face!” He even asked Trump in the interview: “There’s a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship, even on Americans from other countries. What do you think about that?” But Trump instead launched into a conversation about the U.S. trade deficit with the EU, arguing that the European Union was taking “great advantage” of the U.S.
In July, the EUcharged X for failing to respect its social media laws, leaving the platform facing multimillion-euro fines. Only recently, Musk drew extensive criticism from the U.K. government after being accused of fanning the flames as far-right riots occurred. It began when misinformation spread on X that the perpetrator of the Southport stabbing of three young girls was Muslim, which he was not. Among other comments, Musk had said “civil war is inevitable” in response to a video of a riot in Liverpool, which was met with threats that X could be banned and Musk prosecuted for his part in the violence.
Trump has made a recent return to the app after having his account suspended following the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” as the company said at the time. When Musk took over, though, he reinstated Trump’s account.
