A recent conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk drew a massive audience on X and sparked a broader discussion of the many topics they discussed.
Unfortunately, some mainstream media outlets seemed determined to take quotes out of context in order to paint both Trump and Musk in a negative light.
One example involved CNN’s Dana Bash, as reported by the Daily Wire:
Bash played a deceptively edited clip from the X Space interview where Trump and Musk discussed some of the risks involved with nuclear energy, particularly if people are able to move back to areas where nuclear power-plants have had accidents.
The clip that Bash played for CNN viewers contained the following exchange:
MUSK: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re full cities again, so-
TRUMP: Right. Right. Right. That’s great.
MUSK: So, it’s not as scary as people think basically.
ADVERTISEMENTAfter Bash played the clip, she said that they were “sort of suggesting that what happened almost 80 years ago next year, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now it’s okay.”
Bash’s remarks were a blatant distortion of what Musk and Trump were discussing.
What really happened was Trump started talking about what he believed the greatest threat was to the U.S. and to the rest of the world, which he said was “not climate climate,” but the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Plenty of critics sounded off on the blatantly misleading coverage:
WATCH: Fake news CNN selectively edited President @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk's conversation last night to claim they said that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were not a big problem.
The full context shows they were talking about nuclear energy.
All the fake news does… pic.twitter.com/Y0UilefYJp
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 13, 2024
This is terrible. It was obvious that @elonmusk was talking about how radiation declines over time. Some of the best research comes from Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Are you going to correct your misinformation and apologize, @DanaBashCNN ? @CNN @kaitlancollins @StephenAtHome https://t.co/ecrtRAXjkA
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) August 13, 2024
CNN is FAKE NEWS. https://t.co/Fwn0AI4zRi
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) August 13, 2024
What a joke. Feel free to share. https://t.co/hQBoMu92od
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) August 13, 2024
Whether you like/dislike trump doesn’t really matter…this is a pretty damning clip of CNN and explains why tens of millions of Americans have lost trust in the media. https://t.co/YSdXWy12zU
— Anton Vuljaj (@anton) August 13, 2024
The leftist media’s disingenuous response to the Trump-Musk event was almost indistinguishable from the Democratic Party’s effort to disparage both men.
According to The Hill:
Vice President Harris’s campaign responded to former President Trump’s interview with Elon Musk on Monday, calling them “self-obsessed rich guys” and jabbing them over their livestream issues.
“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” the campaign wrote in an official statement after the Monday night interview, which was streamed on the social platform X’s Spaces.
Here’s a clip of the full interview:
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