Category Archives: Elon Musk

Trump says he won’t run for president again in 2028 if he loses in November

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Republican nominee says in interview that he ‘doesn’t see that at all’ and he hasn’t made deals with Musk or RFK Jr

Donald Trump said in an interview released on Sunday that he did not think he would run for president again in 2028 if he loses this year’s race for the White House.

In an interview on the Full Measure television show with Sharyl Attkisson, the former US president – who ran in 2016 and 2020 – was asked whether he saw himself running yet again in four years time.

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Elon Musk backs down in his fight with Brazilian judges to restore X

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The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removed

Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.

X, Musk’s social media platform, has backed down in its fight with the Brazilian judiciary, after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X.

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Activist with far-right ties fronts Marco Rubio-linked anti-immigration effort

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Nate Hochman recorded several videos for America 2100, a thinktank linked to the Republican Florida senator

The rightwing activist Nate Hochman, who was fired last year by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for employing neo-Nazi imagery in a campaign video, is now the face of a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank’s efforts to spread anti-immigrant panic from Ohio to Pennsylvania.

Videos featuring Hochman recorded in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have been boosted on X by a range of rightwing figures including the platform’s owner, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.

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Brazil top judge accuses X of ‘willful’ circumvention of court-ordered block

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Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposes $900,000 daily fine on banned social media platform in dispute with Elon Musk

In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.

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Elon Musk’s X circumvents court-ordered block in Brazil

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Social media platform routes internet traffic outside of Brazil using a communications network update

Social media platform Twitter/X became accessible to many users in Brazil on Wednesday as an update to its communications network circumvented a block order by the country’s supreme court.

The X update used cloud services offered by third parties, allowing some Brazilian users to take a route outside of the country to reach X, even without a virtual private network, according to Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers.

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White House blasts Elon Musk for X post about Biden and Harris assassination

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‘No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,’ X owner tweeted after apparent Trump assassination attempt

The White House has condemned Elon Musk for tweeting “no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala” in response to an X user asking “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

The president’s office issued a statement Monday criticizing the “irresponsible” post, which was accompanied by an emoji face with a raised eyebrow. The White House said: “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible.” The statement added that there should be “no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country”.

This article was amended on 16 September 2024. An earlier version stated that Elon Musk had tweeted “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” It was later corrected to make clear he was replying to that tweet.

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‘Democrats are losing’: a battle on EVs could cost Kamala Harris votes in Michigan

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Trump promises to end electric vehicle mandate. Harris has been silent, risking swing state autoworkers’ critical votes

As the critical swing state of Michigan hangs in the balance, experts warn that Democrats’ poor messaging over the shift to electric vehicles could lose them the state in November’s election.

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now,” Donald Trump told the Republican national convention in a speech this summer that would reach tens of millions of people.

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Elon Musk’s Starlink backtracks to comply with Brazil’s ban on X

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After judge freezes assets of billionaire’s internet service provider, company flip-flops to block social media platform

Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked late on Tuesday and said it would accept and enforce a Brazilian supreme court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.

Previously, Starlink informally told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would not comply until Justice Alexandre de Moraes reversed course. Now, Starlink has said in a statement posted on X that it will heed de Moraes’s order despite him having frozen the company’s assets.

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Lula says Elon Musk’s wealth does not mean world must accept his ‘far-right free-for-all’

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Brazilian president makes comments after supreme court votes to uphold X ban over refusal to obey court orders

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”.

Lula’s comments to the network CNN Brasil came after the supreme court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the ban on X, which is now largely inaccessible in one of its biggest global markets.

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X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws

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Millions of users shut out and 500,000 switch to rival platform Bluesky as providers enact supreme court ban

One of the world’s most popular social networks, X, has gone offline in Brazil – the country with the fifth largest digital population – after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws meant it was blocked by the supreme court.

Millions of Brazilian X users found themselves unable to access the network on Saturday morning as internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban.

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Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk’s X after it missed deadline

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Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted time

The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country.

Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.

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Elon Musk says X will pull operations from Brazil after ‘censorship orders’

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Judge Alexandre de Moraes had ordered X to block certain accounts as he investigated fake news and hate messages

Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.

X claims Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. Brazil’s supreme court, where Moraes has a seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Liz Truss leaves stage over ‘I crashed the economy’ lettuce banner

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Former PM says ‘that’s not funny’ when remote-controlled banner is unfurled behind her at event in Suffolk

Liz Truss left the stage abruptly at an event to promote her own book after campaigners unfurled a banner behind her that was emblazoned with the phrase: “I crashed the economy” below a picture of a lettuce.

The former prime minister, who lasted 45 days in office, was in Suffolk on Tuesday discussing the US presidential election when the campaign group Led By Donkeys lowered its remote-controlled banner with a huge picture of a lettuce.

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Familiar vitriol, and Musk the enabler: key takeaways from Trump’s X interview

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After a 45-minute delay, the former president ran through his greatest hits – and biggest lies – to a fawning Elon Musk

Donald Trump returned to the social media platform that skyrocketed his career for a live discussion with Elon Musk. The former president unleashed familiar rambling, vitriolic talking points to a sympathetic Musk.

Here are key takeaways from the event.

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Trump rehashes vitriol and falsehoods in rambling talk with Musk – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read our on that interview story here.

In addition to this live blogger, conservative commentator Glenn Beck is among those unable to listen to Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk:

The interview was supposed to start five minutes ago, but instead, all we are seeing is a gray box with the words “Details not available”.

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Trump revisits most divisive talking points in rambling interview with Musk

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Ex-president attacks migrants and denounces Kamala Harris in discussion delayed by technical glitch

Donald Trump sat down with billionaire Elon Musk on Monday for a rambling and vitriolic interview that revisited many of the former president’s most divisive talking points.

The interview on X, which is owned by Musk, got off to an inauspicious start, with technical issues that initially prevented many users from watching the conversation. Musk blamed the delay on a “massive” cyber-attack, but the cause of the glitch was not entirely clear.

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Elon Musk’s X suffers tech failures at start of Donald Trump interview

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Musk blames cyber-attack as conversation is delayed, resembling glitchy launch of Ron DeSantis’s campaign

As a high-profile conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk was about to begin, users of X, formerly Twitter, were confronted with the message: “This Space is not available.”

Spaces, X’s livestreaming audio feature, was the chosen forum for the dialogue, but it wasn’t working. Clicking on the link to the broadcast, hosted by Trump’s dormant @RealDonaldTrump account, froze the site and rendered it unusable. Tweeters said they couldn’t dial in; some said their browsers had crashed.

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Jess Phillips calls X a ‘place of misery’ as she vows to scale back use

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Labour minister says she removed social media platform’s app from her mobile phone when Elon Musk took over

A government minister said she has scaled back her use of social media platform X, arguing it had become “a bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.

Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said although she had previously been “massively addicted to Twitter”, referencing the former name of X, she had removed the app from her phone after Elon Musk took over the company in October 2022.

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Nicolás Maduro blocks X for 10 days in Venezuela amid spat with Elon Musk

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President accuses social network’s owner of using it to ‘incite hatred’ after country’s disputed election

President Nicolás Maduro said he had ordered a 10-day block on access to X in Venezuela, accusing the owner, Elon Musk, of using the social network to promote hatred after the country’s disputed presidential election.

Associated Press (AP) journalists in Caracas found that by Thursday night posts had stopped loading on X on two private telephone services and the state-owned Movilnet.

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Online Safety Act not fit for purpose after far-right riots, says Sadiq Khan

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Exclusive: London mayor warns law must be revisited ‘very, very quickly’ due to falsehoods that contributed to unrest

Laws designed to counter misinformation are “not fit for purpose” and must be revisited after the spread of online falsehoods contributed to this month’s far-right riots, the mayor of London has said.

Sadiq Khan, one of the UK’s most senior Muslim politicians, said ministers should act “very, very quickly” to review the Online Safety Act after the violent unrest in England and Belfast over the past week. There have been calls to hasten the act’s implementation.

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