THE TWITTER SPACE TRANSCRIPT: Elon Musk and President Trump have a Conversation

The event started got started 43 minutes late. This is my transcript; it is not 100% accurate.

Above: August 12, 2024, with Donald Trump on a Twitter Space with Elon Musk.

Elon: Welcomes people, apologies for the late start and announces cyber attack against their servers. It saturated basically hundreds of gigabytes. I think we've overcome most of it. There's a lot of opposition to just hearing what President Trump has to say. Let's talk as in a conversation, in a normal way. I want to say this is just a conversation. This is aimed at independent voters who need to make up their mind. Donald, we had a nice conversation yesterday, and I hope we can repeat it today.

Trump: I hope so too. Happy to be here. Congratulations, because I see you broke every rule in the book! Congratulations!

Elon: Thank you. Let's talk about the assassination attempt, which was an incredible thing. Instead of ducking down, you shook your fist. That is strength under fire! That's one of the reasons I endorse you for President of the United States. What was it like for you?

Trump: Not pleasant (they both laugh).

It bled a lot. It was somewhat “surreal". I knew immediately it was a bullet. And I knew it was the ear. There were bullets going over my head as I ducked down.

I am more of a believer. I just happened to be in that certain direction. That immigration sign saved me.

Elon : Maybe that's a sign (from God). They chuckle.

Trump: As you know, we lost Greg Corey, a fantastic man, a fantastic father. A friend wrote out a check to his wife for $1 million. She said she would have rather had her husband back. We agreed.

Thousands and thousands were there. I asked how many people were killed. I have to give it to the SS sharpshooter… he was able to pick him out in 5 seconds, on the opposite side. He saw the smoke, the flame from the gun and he took one perfect shot. I have to take my hat off to him. That was long range.

The shooter had a lot of ammunition.

Elon: There were some pretty significant questions. How did the shooter get on the roof?

Trump: There was one woman with a red shirt and she's screaming, “That a guy has a gun!”

Elon: People are wondering how people saw it but others didn't.

Trump: The communication between the police… they have learned from this.

The man who went to the roof got up fell down and broke his ankle.

From 130 yards, it's not a long shot. The SS had the long shot.

I have to say this about the SS. One miracle was that nobody ran from the stadium. There was no stampede, no people killed from that.

The grandstand behind us was full. They saw me go down, saw the blood. It's like they wanted to be with me. No one fled. Some people behind me stood up! I want to meet them.

The bullets were whizzing by me and the SS, Katie, did a great job.

Elon: From the arial views, that would have been the spot for a shooter.

Trump: When the man fell, we think the shooter ran to his site and then started shooting, and missed.

Elon: Its good that you turned your head right at the right time.

Trump: if I hadn't turned my head, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

…

It didn't get coordinated, that was the problem.

Elon: You can't fake bravery. I think a lot of people appreciate your courage under fire.

Trump: They were on top of me and I wanted to get up. They were saying, “Sir. You've been hit.” I told them I was okay. They wanted to give me a stretcher and I didn't want it.

When I stood up, before I put my fist in the air, no one knew I was alive. The place went crazy!

Elon: That illegal immigration slide saved your life, so you were “saved by illegal immigration”!

Trump: I use a chart, usually it's on the left, and usually it's at the end. Here it was on the right. And at the beginning.

It was a miracle. I'm thankful to God. Thankful to God.

We're going back to Butler, and I think I will start by saying, “…before I was interrupted…” 😂

On illegal immigration, I had good numbers. I had policies in Mexico. We had the best numbers. If you had an infectious disease, I’m sorry but you're not coming in to the country.

That chart was so important, for so many reasons.

Elon: So you are for legal immigration, and against illegal immigration. Is that correct?

Trump: Yes. And now you see Kamala’s policies. They now come out for no tax on tips. And there's never been a time in history when it's been so bad - 20 million immigrants from South America, Asia, the Middle East, from all over the world.

October 7th never should have happened.

At the border, you have millions of people coming in per month! She's incompetent. He's incompetent. But I think she's more incompetent than he is.

Elon: It's essential to have a real border. Having a legal immigration process that runs well - and speaking as an immigrant - who do you want on your Team America? People who benefit the economy, like most.

The adverse selection process, someone with a career in bad things, it's a piece of cake to rob someone Los Angeles or New York… if you try to defend yourself, YOU may go to jail.

Trump: Venezuela crime is down 70% - because they're delivering them to others. Crime all over the world is down. Today in NY, they raped a girlfriend of someone who stood watching in a shelter. Bad things. These are rough criminals. They make our criminals look not so bad.

She's the border czar. She's trying to say she wasn't involved - when she could have shut it down and he wouldn't have even known!

Elon: Whether its a question of competence or not, it looks like wartime. I went to Eagle Pass in Texas to see if it was made up or real. And I have to say these people do not look nice.

Trump: I know these people. They're taking all their really bad people, and their nonproductive people for whatever reason, and these countries are getting rid of them in caravans. In levels never before seen.

I saw an ad by Kamala on how she will protect the borders. What has she been doing for three years?

Elon: If this continues, I m not sure if we will still have a country.

Trump: Theyre coming in from everywhere. Almost no one was from Mexico.

Elon: America is only 3%~4% of the world’s population.

Trump: From the Congo, 22 murderers came in. They take them out of prison, deposit them in the USA, and tell them not to come back or they will execute them.

Elon: It's not possible to absorb everyone.

Trump: What they've done to our country: Venezuela’s jails are about 50% now in the USA. They're doing this right now.

Biden did so badly in the debate. We cannot have her. She's incompetent. She hasn't done an interview. This was a coup. They said you can do this the nice way or the hard way.

We wouldn't have had Ukraine, inflation. There are so many things that would be different.

Elon: Do people fear the American President? Look at the assassination footage. President Trump is ‘Don’t mess with me.” The security of the world depends on a strong President.

Trump: They put our country in danger. I know Putin very well. We would talk about Ukraine, it was his apple’s eye. Shut down his pipeline. And this President gets in, shuts down our pipeline and thousands of American jobs - underground. Think of it. He shut down Keystone XL Pipeline. It makes no sense.

Elon: It matters how much the American President is viewed as being tough.

Trump: These are tough people at the top of their game. Look at Israel. They're waiting for an attack from Iran. I told them. If you want to buy oil from Iran, you're out. And Hamas had no money! We were respected! We were so respected that when I said don’t buy their oil, they didn't do it. I got along well with him.

Kim Jong-Un has a red button on his desk. I said my button was bigger than yours. I got along with him well. He and I had a good relationship. I walked on to his land. No one does that.

We have enemies on the inside, and enemies on the outside. I say the enemies on the inside are more dangerous than Russia or China.

We forced Russia and China together. Then they got Iran and No. Korea, a modern-day axis of evil.

The big thing isn't the global warming. It’s nuclear warming. We can't let stupid things happen.

Biden started saying that Russia can be a NATO country. Russia never wanted that. Biden had a low IQ and said so many things that were so stupid. He said everything the opposite.

You don't know how bloody the Ukraine war is.

Russia defeated Germany with us. They defeated Napoleon.

Ukraine is using old men and young men. A smart President could have stopped that. The stupid threats coming from a stupid man. We have numerous places a WWIII could start.

Elon: At the end of the Cold War, people have forgotten that many places have nuclear power.

Trump: Why shouldn't we have an Iron Dome? We're going to have one.

People want to talk about food prices being up 60-70%. Most people care about the economy.

By the way, do you think Biden or Harris could do this interview? In her case, she has all friendly interviews.

The economy is an inflation problem. If you're a worker, you're using all your money and borrowing money.

Elon: if the government spends more than it brings in, that's inflation. Where are we spending money successfully!? We're adding a $ trillion and it keeps growing.

Trump: we had fighter jets and we gave them to Afghanistan. That was embarrassing.

Energy costs start with gasoline, the cost of heating and cooling your house has gone up 109%. They stopped drilling. If they win, their energy policy is not sustainable.

And AI requires twice the energy that a country produces! We will need tremendous amounts of energy, almost double what the country now uses.

Elon: Would you agree we need to look at our spending? We need a government efficiency program.

Trump: Air Force One was $5.7 billion for 2 planes. Who made the deal? Obama. And in a couple weeks, I saved $1.6 billion for the same plane. Now they go back to Biden for more money.

Elon: I would be interested in a government efficiency program.

Trump: You would be good!

You know that the new leader in Argentina is a MAGA supporter. He bought a bunch of hats! They had real inflation. We have the worst inflation than in the last 100 years. They say 40 years but they don't count everything.

Elon: Argentina has a lesson on prosperity. Bad government policy ruined the country. They have oil, everything. It should be prosperous! Bad government can ruin the country.

Trump: We're at the bottom of the list on education. I want to move the Department of Education back to the states. Gavin won't do great with education, but I bet 15-20 of them will be as good as Norway.

We have states that don't know what debt is, they really well run. The states will be forced to do better. And it will cost half as much.

Elon: If states compete against one another, people will move to the good states.

Trump: Some states run badly. Like Illinois. You want to be sure they're teaching English.

Trump: I saw you left California and moved to Texas, like a recent oil company. And in many places, you wonder how they really go on.

Elon: And if the state runs out of money, they ask for federal funding. If we help inflation, we help all the people.

Trump: The people who saved money have been decimated. We have to get the prices down. Look at the prices. People go in and they get sticker shock.

Elon: If you solve government spending, you help inflation. If you have deregulation, like during Reagan, that can help.

Trump: We did radical cuts, had the best economy than other countries, we knocked out ISIS. We never got the credit on Covid, and the Wuhan labs, we were going to reduce debt for businesses. We would have supplied Europe with a pipeline.

If I didn't do what I did, we would have had a depression. During his administration, more people died than during ours. People don't realize it. African Americans, young people from MIT were doing better. Then they wasted trillions of dollars and they shouldn't have done it.

Elon: My view on oil/gas industries is that we shouldn't stop using them. I don't think it's right to vilify them.

My view is that over time, you will run out of oil and gas. The risk of carbon, 1000 ppm, you get nausea. We're at 400 ppm now, adding 2 ppm per year. We don't have to stop farming.

Trump: I hear we have 100 to 500 years of fossil fuel. Buden ended what we had in Alaska. It could be bigger than Saudi Arabia, the same size. Pure.

Elon: We're not all going to die in 5 years. At 2 ppm/year CO2, and you go up to 5 ppm, we don't want to get close to 1000 ppm. We would have headaches. If 100 years from now, we can get there without hardship, with people eating steak. We should just lean in that direction. We like solar power during the day and batteries during the night. We're moving towards that. We want to be sexy. Let's have an inspiring ft. Let's do it without demonizing.

Trump: I am sort of waiting for you to come up with a solar panel roof, flat surfaces, that this would be interesting.

People talk about global warming, but not nuclear warming. China is lower, but it's going to catch up. Russia and us are almost equal. The nuclear power, to me, is so great. This is no longer armies. This is a very bad side.

Elon: I think nuclear energy for electricity is quite low on injuries and deaths for mining and nuclear is much better.

Trump: We will have to rebrand it. In Japan, you can't go back to the land for 3,000 years.

Elon: I actually went to Fukushima and ate local vegetables on camera. Hiroshima is fully populated. Let's talk about other things.

Trump: In Florida, we won. They use local AGs, it's all a big hoax. The Leticia James case was run as “lawfare” and it never happened in our country. It actually drove my numbers ut. They went after me, and now Biden is on the beach. He looks so bad! He can't lift a chair and it weighs 3 ounces.

And she destroyed San Francisco, and then the Attorney General for California. What she's done with cashless bail - they just let them out! She wants to be more Trump than Trump.

In your business, you know obsolete. I built 100 miles of walls. We could have finished it in weeks. And then they sold wall parts for 5c on the dollar.

She's more left than Bernie Sanders, no fracking, and the day she gets in, she'll end fracking. Both sides hate her and Biden.

Elon: when Netanyahu came, she stood him up.

Trump: They expect hundreds of missles. They can swamp it by sending too many missles. There's no respect for her.

Elon: We're seeing an effort to make her seem moderate. She's not.

Trump: She picked someone, an anti-Israel, far left. He put tampons in boys bathrooms.

Elon: That's just wrong.

I got a letter from the EU Commission on misinformation.

Trump: I know the EU. We protect them. Yet if you make a car in the US, you can't sell it there. Same with our farmers.

On Ukraine, we're in at $250 million, and they're in for $70 billion. I say, “Why aren't they paying what we're paying?”

The US was tremendously defending NATO and I pulled it in. And then we get taken advantage of on trade.

Elon: Why are we paying more than them?

Trump: in many cases, the people within are more of a problem than those in a big country like Russia.

Rlon: You never tried to stop freedom of speech.

Trump: Kamala can't have this conversation. Biden couldn't do it.

Elon: This is a big point. I can have a conversation with you.

Trump: Kin Jong-Un is the absolute boss over there. He doesn't like Biden. He said, “He's a stupid man.” We need people who are sharp.

Elon: America should be a country with a future. There are some projects we could do. We can solve traffic with tunnels, like in Vegas. Make the future better than the past. Deregulation, high-speed tunnels between cities. That would make America proud.

Trump: I've seen the bullet trains. We have nothing like it, and we should.

Elon: There's more regulations every year, and the FDA needs reform for new drugs to save lives.

Trump: We got things at the FDA done. But they take too long. I got some things done very quickly.

Elon: There has to be an active program to diminish laws and regulations.

Trump: I had “right to try”. It stopped people from going to another country! For terminally ill people, we agreed that you don't get sued, nor as a negative death statistic. No one wanted it, you sign a document that you won't sue, and that's the Right to Try Program. They tried to do it for 50 years.

Elon: If it's approved in Europe, it should be approved in the USA.

Trump: How many people are watching? I think it will be 60 or 70 million. Do I get paid for this?

Elon: Laughs.

Trump: We put out polls. People are not better off. Now there's migrant crime.

Elon: My mom lives in New York. Several of her friends got assaulted. The perpetrators all got away. And the people won't get prosecuted.

Trump: The only one that gets prosecuted is me.

Elon: The sensible public sees this as being not right.

Trump: In going after a political opponent, with a judge who's crooked as hell, plus a jury that hates Republicans or the other party… it's an unfair justice system. People are leaving. Businesses are leaving. But we are going to change that.

We can talk about cars, trains, it's an amazing thing you have done.

Elon: Here's to a future that is bright and to hope for the future. And that's why I am endorsing you.

Trump: if things go a certain way, I am not sure if we can ever recover.

Elon: I supported Obama and stood in line for six hours to shake his hand. Now I an a moderate. Kamala is a Marxist socialist. That was the way she was brought up. I think Kamala is the opposite of what you are. I haven't been active in politics before. To people in the moderate camp, I think you should support Donald Trump.

Trunp: Thank you. I thought you were more left (laughter). I hope that the elections will be run properly. We have radical stone-cold killers, and we have to take them out.

Elon: We want safe cities, reasonable government spending, stop the lawfare. That's just common sense, not being right-wing.

Trump: I don't understand how anyone can say it's okay to let criminals come in. Their crime rates go down. Ours goes up. We have great law enforcement but they need to be able to do their job.

Elon: You arrest a criminal and then the DA lets them go.

Trump: Worse, they crimunalize the police officer. He gets fired, loses his family.

Elon: How can we let some of these things occur?

Trump: I saw 6 guys punching him, but in their own country, they would be shot!

Elon: We can't have our police officers getting beat up and then nothing happens.

Trump: They would tell America they can't bring back the criminals. Then I told them all their debt could be good, or no more economic aid. They don't take them back to their country, because of Biden.

Elon: You can't have repeat offenders that stay out of jail. You obviously want to have empathy. But you have to have empathy for those who were harmed. If you don't incarcerate someone, they will have another victim. There's too much empathy for the criminals. We can't have shallow empathy for the victims.

Trump: We're going to get rid of these people. We took out thousands of MS-13 criminals. I hope everyone is going to vote for Trump. I don't need it. I have great places. If I had to do it over again. I would do it. These people are liars. They say the border is better but now we have been the worst.

Elon: We want to have some projects that people can look forward to. We want to move at a reasonable speed to alternate energy and that's why I am supporting you.

Trump: We want to create jobs. It's about the American dream. You are the American dream. You don't hear about the American dream any more. They need the incentive. People are going to love their lives. They're going to look forward to waking up in the morning.

We're going to do some great things. I learned alot the first time. We rebuilt the military, built the economy. I learned the people who can do things. I learned the smart people, the dumb people.

I was in Washington, DC only 17 times, according to the fake news media. I never stayed over. You relied on people. We had some great people, but we also had some that I would not have used.

But now I know everyone. We're really going to turn things around fast. We have no choice, otherwise we won't have a country.

You are a great inspiration for people. A great inspiration. I hope you keep going and just continue to do well. We're going to have a big election coming up. I think November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country. It is maybe the most important election. I think it's maybe the most important day in the history of our country. If we don't win, I just feel very sorry for everyone.

Elon: I think we are at a fork in the road of destiny of civilization. And I think we need to take the right path. And I think you are the right path.

Trump: We’ll do it again sometime. I know you got a lot of viewers. I appreciate it. We’ll see you soon. I’ll see you soon.

Elon: We got a lot. Thank you.

Trump: Thank you very much. Bye.

Did you notice any gaps? What did you like the most? The least? Did it change your vote?