Left-wing politicians and their legacy lapdog media were worried sick about Elon Musk airing Donald Trump’s views on X Spaces Monday night.
Indeed, a European Union commissioner, of all people, warned Musk not to do it; a Washington Post reporter basically pleaded with the White House to prevent it; and the Kamala Harris campaign issued a sky-is-falling missive cackling that Musk “was attempting to seize ‘control’ of ‘our democracy’ by hosting Trump,” as the New York Post put it.
Fact is, they should’ve been more concerned about the number of views – which dwarf what the former Fourth Estate can reach:
“Between 7:47 p.m. and 10:47 p.m. ET, President Donald Trump’s Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump’s conversation on X, generating a total of 998 million views,” Musk’s X posted after the event.
“2024 SUPER BOWL – the most-watched NFL championship in history – had about 123 million people tuned in across platforms (digital and broadcast),” one X user posted.
“BOOM.”
It may even have been a watershed event in American, and even human, history – the moment we broke free from the surly bonds of the increasingly corrupt museum-piece media.
Musk isn’t a journalist – as neither are the hundreds of thousands of citizens watchdogging government today online. But it’s fair to say that true journalism is no longer practiced in the former mass media – and has migrated online.
It took former Fox and CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, for instance, to reveal this week – in a way the formerly respected 60 Minutes used to – that Homeland Security whistleblowers have been punished for sounding the alarm that the department is breaking the law in its failure to vet illegal immigrants with DNA collections.
And despite the Chicken Little predictions of Musk/Trump monkeying with gravity, as one X user noted, “A moderate Republican and a moderate Democrat just talked for over two hours. No race baiting, fear mongering, pandering or hoaxes. Just two smart people throwing around ideas on how to improve the country.
“This is the antidote to so many of the current poisons.”
On the other hand, legacy media may have reason to fear.
“Trump and Elon’s conversation just got more views than all mainstream media combined today. That’s why the fake news is mad, they can’t control it,” an X user observed.
“We are the news now,” another user added.
“Trump talking to @elonmusk could very well be the beginning of the end of the mainstream media and their caterwauling and screeching tells me they know it,” one poster crowed.
“X is making them all irrelevant. And it’s glorious.”
Meanwhile, as if to prove that point, Time magazine issued a fawning cover rendering of Kamala Harris reminiscent of history’s bootlicking propagandists in the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Cuba and North Korea’s “Dear Leader.”
“Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history,” the magazine gushed – notwithstanding the naked reality that Harris has done nothing, talked with no reporter, submitted to no journalistic scrutiny, to “pull off” the sycophantic media’s blizzard of “Kamalot” indoctrination.
Remember, this is a 2020 presidential candidate who never got one toe off the ground, and a vice president who, even this media had to once concede, was just a few weeks ago among the most ineffective, inarticulate and unpopular in history.
So yes, it’s a big deal that X Spaces listeners got a good dose of Trump unfiltered by the crooked partisan media.
“The media told us Kamala sold out her Phoenix and Vegas rallies,” one X user opined. “They were half empty. The media tells us Kamala is leading the polls. They are using D+6 samples. The media told us Joe Biden was just fine. He wasn’t.
“Only an idiot would believe the media.”
One hilarious, spot-on meme was circulating X the evening of the Musk/Trump talk: A photo of a 1940s-era family, father with pipe in hand, nestling together in front of a stand-up floor radio.
“This was us tonight, except with a cellphone. X,” one post of it crooned.
“Elon just confirmed that his interview with Trump has over 1 billion views X,” another post exulted. “Mainstream media is officially DEAD.”
That delicious prospect – not the airing of a major presidential candidate’s views – is what should scare the living daylights out of our misleading media monarchs.
This column was published by the Kansas Informer. Michael Ryan is Executive Editor of The Heartlander. A Kansas City native, he’s been an award-winning reporter, editor and opinion writer at newspapers in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and Texas. See more at www.heartlandernews.com.
