Trump claims Biden was ousted in 'coup' and calls Harris 'third-rate, phoney candidate' in Elon Musk interview

13 August 2024, 05:39 | Updated: 13 August 2024, 05:41

Donald Trump claimed that Joe Biden lost the Democratic nomination in a "coup" and called his replacement Kamala Harris a "third-rate, phoney candidate" in an interview with Elon Musk.

The former president claimed in a conversation with the Twitter owner that was beset with technical issues that Mr Biden "didn't want to leave" the race.

"Don’t forget, I beat Biden," Mr Trump told Mr Musk during the two-hour interview, referring to the disastrous debate that eventually led to Mr Biden's downfall.

He said: "This was a coup of 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".

Mr Trump said that Ms Harris was "not a smart woman" but a "radical left lunatic".

He added: "If she is our president we’re not going to have a country anymore…If you vote for her, you should have your head examined".

Ms Harris campaign said in response: "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 livestream in the year 2024".

Earliner in the conversation, Mr Trump claimed "illegal immigration saved my life" after he had turned to look at an illegal immigration chart during the Pennsylvania rally on July 13 - leading to the gunman only catching his ear.

At the time, he was rushed off the stage by Secret Service agents after multiple gunshots were fired.

Video footage showed him dropping to the ground while clutching his right ear.

Trump told Musk the experience was "not pleasant", adding that his first question was "how many people have been killed?"

He also paid tribute to the victim of the shooting, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, who he said was "a great Trumper".

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It came after Musk opened the conversation with the former president by addressing the technical issues that delayed it kicking off on time.

He appeared to accuse the Democrats of attacking X when one user posted "Is Dems fighting to 'save' Democracy from two massive disrupters".

He responded: "Yeah."

Once the technical issues were resolved, Musk first addressed the assassination attempt with Trump.

The shooting was what led to him publicly backing the former president.

Recalling the experience, Trump said: "I didn't know I had that much blood.

"The doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place if you're going to get hit."

Trump went on to confirm to Musk that he would be returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a second rally in October - just weeks before election day.

"We're going to go back in October. We're all set up," Trump said.

After saying that he had been "horribly interrupted" by the shooting, he added: "I think I'll probably start by saying, 'as I was saying'."

The interview, which was due to start at 1am UK time, did not start until around 1.40am on Tuesday morning.

Those able to access the interview space online were greeted with music rather than a conversation between the two men.

Musk blamed the attack on the system for preventing access to his conversation with the Republican presidential candidate.

Posting on the platform, he said: "There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down.

"Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later."

A distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack is an attempt to disrupt the traffic of a server or network by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic.

Musk said: "We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today".