Tech billionaire Elon Musk confirmed Friday that his X app is planning to host a livestreamed town hall-style event with former President Donald Trump.
“This will be interesting,” Musk, the owner of X, posted on the app while sharing a report about the plan from the New York Post.
Plans for the event were reported Thursday by Axios, which said X was planning a similar video event with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
President Joe Biden will not be participating in an X town hall, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s plans.
X has not announced a date for the event or any additional details. Representatives for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino celebrated the announcement, posting that it would be “The People’s Town Hall!” and adding a fire emoji.
The planned event is a continuation of Trump’s courtship of Musk, who is one of the world’s wealthiest people. The two men met in March along with a group of wealthy Republican donors, and Trump later said that he liked Musk and had helped him in unspecified ways while he was president.
The event would also represent Trump’s return to the platform formerly known as Twitter that he was once ubiquitous on. Twitter’s previous management banned Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a group of his supporters, and although Musk reinstated his account in 2022, Trump has rarely posted since.
Earlier Friday, Musk posted that he was alarmed by a jury finding Trump guilty on 34 felony counts in his New York hush-money trial on Thursday, calling Trump’s conduct a “trivial matter.”
Musk has not yet endorsed any candidate but his leanings are closely watched because of his wealth, media influence and roles in highly regulated businesses as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He posted in March that he was not donating money to either Biden or Trump this year. He also posted that he’s “leaning away” from supporting Biden but didn’t have plans to endorse Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Musk and Trump have grown increasingly friendly, talking by phone several times a month.
Musk has positioned X as a crucial part of the right-wing media, posting conservative positions on subjects such as immigration and earlier hosting the presidential campaign launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who later dropped out of the race.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
