Trump posts campaign ad on X ahead of Musk interview

Former President Trump on Monday posted to the social platform X for the first time in nearly a year, sharing a campaign advertisement just hours before he is set to sit for an interview with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk.

The post on X featured a 2 1/2-minute advertisement, titled “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” with no caption.

The ad, which covers Trump’s rise to the White House to the subsequent legal battles he has faced, has been featured on Trump’s other social media platforms in recent weeks.

The X post garnered more than 4.8 million views in less than an hour, with more than 50,000 reposts and 21,000 comments.

Monday marked just the second time Trump has posted on X since his account was suspended in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and reinstated the following year. His only other post since then was on Aug. 24, 2023, when he shared an image of his mug shot following his surrender in Fulton County, Ga., earlier that day.

Musk, who was responsible for reinstating Trump’s account after he purchased X in 2022, is set to interview the former president Monday. The interview will be hosted live on Trump’s official account starting at 8 p.m. EDT.

The “live conversation” will be “unscripted with no limits on subject matter,” Musk wrote Sunday, adding it “should be highly entertaining.” He encouraged users to post specific questions and comments under the stream’s chat.

Musk’s reinstatement of Trump’s account in 2022 was part of the tech billionaire’s new approach to the platform’s content moderation policies. He has since reinstated the accounts of a handful of other controversial figures, including far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, late last year.

During his 2016 presidential campaign and first term in the White House, Trump was known for using that platform to share everything from jabs at his political opponents to announcing major decisions from the White House.

Musk endorsed Trump’s reelection bid shortly after the attempted assassination last month, and he has since levied a series of attacks against Vice President Harris, who became the Democratic presidential nominee following President Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.