Donald Trump thought that he saved his campaign and Elon Musk is putting out cooked numbers, but the ex-president is upset that the media won’t push the lie.
Trump posted on Truth Social, “An all-time record, but the media refuses to write about it because they are FAKE NEWS!”
Elon Musk is claiming that the Trump interview got 1 billion listens, but Musk has been using his own funny math to define a listen since he took over the platform. One of the first things that Musk did when he started making changes to Twitter was to abandon the standard and above-board method for calculating views and listens.
One of the reasons why advertisers have fled X in droves is that there has long been speculation that Musk has been counting impressions as views, so if someone scrolls past a piece of media, that will be counted as a listen or view. Musk has also taken to auto-playing media for all users to boost view and listen counts, and it has been suggested that he counts one second of listening as a listen.
Musk’s view and listens statistics are total BS, which is why the media ignores them.
The interview itself was a complete failure for Trump. X once again crashed, and people could not access the interview, and then when the interview did begin, what Trump did for the two hours was a gift to Democrats. Trump rambled, babbled, couldn’t stay on topic, and at one point suggested that he would flee the country if he lost the election.
No one is going to believe Trump and Musk’s cooked-up numbers.
It is revealing that Donald Trump doesn’t want people to focus on what he said but on the number of imaginary people who Musk claims listened.
The interview was about Trump trying to change the perception that his campaign is weak and losing, and by that criteria, it failed.
Trump now looks like an even weaker candidate who is totally unfit for the presidency.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
