Business leaders react: Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s conversation about X

Here’s how top political and business leaders responded to the conversation.

Mark Cuban

In a post on X, billionaire Mark Cuban asked: “Is anyone keeping track of how much each participant is talking on this Spaces ‘conversation’?”

The use of quotes around “conversation” appeared to refer to Musk’s marketing of Space as a conversation rather than an interview.

“My use of the word conversation is deliberate,” Musk said earlier, adding, “No one is themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like.”

But Cuban’s question seemed to allude to the fact that Trump spent most of the time in space talking, with Musk speaking only occasionally between Trump’s long, rambling answers.

In a later post, Cuban wrote: “Aren’t most conversations a little more balanced? Shouldn’t both participants ask the other questions instead of just asking them one?”

Gavin Newsom

Governor Gavin Newsom of California, who has a strained relationship with Musk, took a swipe at both CEO X and the GOP nominee.

“Glitchy. Tech issues. Awkward silences. A complete failure at launch. And this is just the candidate,” Newsom tweeted, along with a screenshot of an error message for the X live stream.

Newsom’s message was a word-for-word quote from what a Trump spokesman said about Ron DeSantis’ disastrous live gubernatorial campaign at X in May 2023. That live stream was a messy start to of DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign and was plagued by long silences. , multiple false starts and repeated crashes.

Aaron Levy

Box CEO Aaron Levie had a request for Musk during the conversation.

“.@elonmusk please ask him to explain the Hannibal Lecter reference,” Levie said in an X post, referring to Trump’s habit of bringing up the fictional cannibal made famous by the 1991 film, ” The Silence of the Lambs,” during his speeches. .

Levie later deleted his post.

Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, the game company behind FarmVille, praised the former president during his conversation with Musk.

“Trump is strong in conversation. Hate me for telling the truth!” Pincus said in an X post.

But Pincus had harsher words for the Tesla CEO, writing in a second post: “Elon: It’s like talking to an NPC. We all know that every time you try to talk to any politician.”

David Sacks

David Sacks, the venture capitalist behind Craft Ventures and former CEO of Yammer, had a simple and positive takeaway from the evening, responding to a post on X asking users to describe Musk and Trump’s conversation in one word.

“Delighted,” Sacks wrote.

Sacks and Musk previously bonded over a shared distrust of Democratic politicians, and at a dinner in the Hollywood Hills in April, they discussed strategies for defeating Biden in the upcoming election.

Since then, he has hosted a large fundraiser in support of Trump, which raised about $12 million.

The Harris campaign

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign hit out at both Musk’s and Trump’s campaigns in a statement on X shortly after the live stream ended.

“Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature, not a bug, of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen tonight on whatever was on X.com,” it read in the statement.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in the service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and can’t run a live stream in the year 2024,” the campaign added.