Six wild and troubling issues Donald Trump and Elon Musk did in final 24 hours after joint interview
Donald Trump and Elon Musk sat down for a joint interview, broadcast last night – where the Genius Twins put on a united front to dispel rumours of a rift.
During the interview, Trump and Musk denied claims nobody was checking whether Elon had any conflicts of interest between his companies and his DOGE work – insisting Elon is marking his own homework.
Despite berating Government workers for working from home, Trump spent Tuesday – a work day – at one of his luxury golf resorts in Florida.
And during a press conference he straight up blamed Ukraine for the war, suggesting if they’d just let Putin’s tanks roll over them, the war would have been over much sooner.
Oh yeah, and he attended a party with several convicted felons.
Here’s all that, plus more wild and troubling things Donald Trump and Elon Musk got up to on Tuesday.
1. Trump, again, blamed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on… Ukraine
Speaking from his Florida golf course resort, Mar A Lago, where he is, despite it being a work day, the President went the furthest yet in blaming the Ukraine war on Ukraine – explicitly saying they should have given up territory to Russia when they invaded.
Trump said he was “disappointed” to hear Volodymyr Zelensky had complained about being left out of talks in Riyadh, saying: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited’. Well, you been there for three years. You should have ended it three years (ago).
“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
He added: “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would’ve given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land and no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished.”
2. Elon Musk gets to mark his own homework
During a deeply weird joint sit-down interview with (who else) Fox News – the kind of interview a politician gives alongside his wife when he’s got caught having an affair – Elon Musk set everyone’s minds at rest. It’s not that nobody is keeping an eye on his conflicts of interest. Oh no, no, no.
He’s keeping an eye on them himself.
“What about his business?” Fox blowhard Sean Hannity asked. “What if there is a contract he would otherwise get?”
“If he’s got a contract,” Trump began, “If he’s in certain areas. You see this morning – I didn’t know, I said do the right thing…where they’re cutting back on the electric vehicle subsidies…they’re cutting back! He’s probably not that happy with it. But that would have been one thing where he would have come to me and said listen, you gotta do me a favour.”
For clarity, what he’s suggesting would have been a natural response from Musk there, would to most people be considered straight up corruption.
“I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever,” Musk said – which we’ll come back to in a moment.
And if something comes up, how will Musk handle it?
“I’ll recuse myself,” Musk insisted.
As for whether he’s ever asked Trump for anything, maybe not. But he got a sit-down meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week apparently without even having to ask.
When Trump was asked about the meeting he told reporters he didn’t know why they met, but said Musk probably “wants to do business” in India.
3. Trump admitted inflation is back, but it has nothing to do with him…
Donald Trump admitted “inflation is back” in the interview – before going on to complain he’d only been in charge again for two and a half weeks, so it couldn’t possibly be his fault.
During the same two-and-a-half weeks, Trump has taken credit for improved GDP growth, improved stock market performance, unemployment being low and reduced border crossings – all of which were on a positive trend well before he took office.
4. Musk read the numbers wrong again
Elon claimed it was an uphill struggle to get his “reforms” through because Washington’s government workforce was overwhelmingly Democratic, and therefore “implacably” resistant to Trump and republicans in general.
He gave as evidence a statistic that 92% of voters in Washington DC voted for Kamala Harris.
While it’s true that DC has always voted heavily Democratic, that’s not necessarily evidence that government workers skew Democrat to the same degree.
The city (the District) itself is one of the most ethnically diverse in the country – and was majority black until 2011. Despite its reputation as a “company town” – around three quarters of DC residents work in the private sector – a combination of highly paid law, science and professional jobs and retail, service and construction.
And only about a third of government workers in DC actually live in the District, with the remaining two thirds living in nearby Maryland and Virginia.
Clayton county voted for Harris by 84.31% – but that’s probably not an indication that the supply chain and logistics industry around the world’s busiest airport – Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International – is implacably skewed to benefit one party and resist another. It’s just how people voted.
5. Trump and Musk falsely claimed tens of millions of dead people are claiming pensions
Over the past few days the Genius Twins have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200 and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits — a “HUGE problem,” Musk wrote, as his goon squad half-read yet another spreadsheet and jumped to the least likely conclusion.
It is true that improper payments have been made, including some to dead people. But the numbers thrown out by Musk and the White House are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data.
Yesterday, at his Mar A Lago presser, Trump claimed “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.
“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” he said. He also said that there’s one person in the system listed as 360 years old.
Late Monday, Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” and “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”
And thinking about it for a second would probably have been a good idea.
Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language which has a lack of date type. Which you’d think Musk’s gang of teen tech savants would know.
This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. WIRED magazine first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.
Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.
The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.
A July 2023 Social Security OIG report states that “almost none of the number holders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.” And, as of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.
6. Stopped by a pool-side awards party with Mike Tyson and Russell Brand
Perhaps explaining why he stayed at his Florida resort instead of heading back to Washington after the President’s Day holiday on Monday, Trump paid a visit to an awards bash held by America’s Future, the right wing group led by his former national security advisor Mike Flynn – who you’ll remember pleaded guilty to “wilfully and knowingly making materially false statements and omissions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation” about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s first term.
Also in attendance at the poolside soiree? Convicted rapist Mike Tyson and Russell Brand, who continues to deny serious sexual assault allegations.
And Ted Nugent, the southern rock singer who has admitted to several affairs with underage girls, was in a relationship with a 17-year-old Hawaii native in the late 70s – getting round marriage laws by getting her parents to make him her legal guardian, and sang the 1981 song “Jailbait”. He was also there.
Trump made an appearance at the event, according to video posted on social media Tuesday night, addressing the crowd on the patio as he stood near Tyson, Flynn and Nugent and declaring, “This is very, very friendly territory.”
