Elon Musk clashes with EU over X ‘disinformation’ ahead of Donald Trump interview

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Elon Musk clashed with the EU ahead of a planned interview with Donald Trump on X as a war of words broke out between Brussels and the technology billionaire’s social media platform over content related to the US election.

The dispute erupted as Trump, the Republican US presidential nominee, returned to X on Monday with a number of posts on a social media platform that had once banned him, just hours before the interview with Musk.

The billionaire’s planned event with Trump triggered a strident warning to X from Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for the internal market, about the dissemination of “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation”.

Breton said in a letter addressed to Musk that he was “compelled to remind” the tech entrepreneur of the “due diligence obligations” set out in the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is designed to police online hate speech and disinformation.

Breton said he was writing to Musk “in relation to” the planned live X broadcast with Trump on Monday, and in the wake of recent violence in the UK, where social media platforms have been criticised for inciting race riots across the country.

Musk responded to Breton with a meme from the 2008 movie Tropic Thunder, in which an actor yells: “Take a big step back and literally fuck your own face.”

X chief executive Linda Yaccarino wrote of Breton’s letter: “This is an unprecedented attempt to stretch a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the US. It also patronises European citizens, suggesting they are incapable of listening to a conversation and drawing their own conclusions.”

Musk, a self-declared “free-speech absolutist”, endorsed Trump’s re-election bid last month just after the failed assassination attempt against him, and recently launched a campaign funding group to support the former president’s White House bid.

Trump said the interview with Musk on Monday on X would be the “interview of the century”, and marked the event with posts on the platform that was crucial to his electoral success in 2016.

Among the posts was a campaign video that reminded viewers of the federal indictments against him for allegedly mishandling classified documents and conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you,” says Trump in the video. He also vows to “totally obliterate the Deep State”.

The post had more than 19mn views four hours after it was posted, according to X.

Another video criticised Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in this year’s presidential election.

Trump’s sudden reappearance on X comes as this year’s race for the White House tightens, with Harris now level or even ahead in some swing states, according to surveys conducted since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate.

X, formerly Twitter, banned Trump from the platform for life in 2021 shortly after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6. He had repeatedly violated the platform’s rules against inciting or glorifying violence.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, reinstated Trump’s account later that year and loosened the platform’s moderation policies, allowing suspended and controversial figures to return.

Before Monday, Trump had only posted once since Musk reinstated his account — on August 24 2023, when he surrendered to authorities in Georgia on felony charges relating to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. The post sparked a surge in donations to his campaign.

Trump launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, in 2022, in an attempt to compete with Twitter.

A clause between Truth Social and Trump requiring him to post on the platform six hours before doing so elsewhere expired last year. Trump’s audience on X, where he has 88mn followers, is far greater than on Truth Social, where he has 7.5mn followers.

In quarterly earnings released on Friday, Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, showed sales fell from $1.19mn to $837,000 in the three months to June, when it reported a net loss of $16,400. Shares in TMTG closed down 5.1 per cent on Monday in New York.

This article has been amended to correct Trump Media & Technology’s quarterly figures.