Elon Musk clashed with the EU ahead of a planned interview with Donald Trump on “X” when 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 when Trump, the Republican U.S. presidential candidate, returned to X on Monday with a series of posts on a social media platform that had once banned him, just hours before the interview with Musk.
The billionaire’s planned meeting with Trump triggered a stark warning to X from Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, warning against the spread of “content that promotes hatred, unrest, incitement to violence or certain forms of disinformation”.
In a letter addressed to Musk, Breton said he was “compelled to remind the tech entrepreneur of the due diligence obligations” set out in the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is intended to prevent hate speech and disinformation online.
Breton said he wrote to Musk “in connection” with the planned Live X broadcast with Trump on Monday, and also after recent violence in Britain, where social media platforms were criticized for inciting racial unrest across the country.
Musk responded to Breton with a meme from the 2008 film Tropical Thunderin which an actor screams, “Take a big step back and literally fuck your own face.”
X’s executive director, Linda Yaccarino, wrote of Breton’s letter: “This is an unprecedented attempt to extend a law that should apply in Europe to political activity in the United States. It also patronizes European citizens and suggests that they are incapable of listening to a conversation and drawing their own conclusions.”
In response to Breton’s letter, the Trump campaign called the EU an “enemy of free speech.” “The European Union should mind its own business instead of trying to interfere in the US presidential election,” a Trump campaign spokesman said.
The campaign also suggested that the bloc was trying to prevent Trump from returning to the presidency for trade policy reasons.
“They know that a victory for President Trump means America will no longer be ripped off because he will skillfully use tariffs and renegotiated trade deals that put America first,” it said.
Musk, a self-described “champion of absolute free speech,” supported Trump’s re-election campaign last month, immediately after the failed assassination attempt on him, and recently formed a campaign finance group to support the former president in his bid to win the White House.
Trump said Monday’s interview with Musk on X would be the “interview of the century” and marked the event with posts on the platform that were crucial to his election victory in 2016.
Among the posts was a campaign video that reminded viewers of the federal charges 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,” Trump says in the video. He also vows to “totally wipe out the Deep State.”
According to X, the post had more than 19 million views four hours after it was published.
Another video criticized Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in this year’s presidential election.
Trump’s sudden return on the “X” campaign platform comes at a time when the race for the White House is heating up this year: According to polls since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, Harris is now tied or even ahead of her in some swing states.
X, formerly Twitter, banned Trump from the platform for life in 2021, shortly after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. He had repeatedly violated the platform’s rules, which do not incite or glorify violence.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, restored Trump’s account later that year and relaxed the platform’s moderation policies, allowing banned and controversial figures to return.
Before Monday, Trump had posted only once since Musk restored his account – on August 24, 2023, when he turned himself in to authorities in Georgia, where he was accused of serious crimes related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. The post sparked a surge in donations to his campaign.
To compete with Twitter, Trump launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, in 2022.
A clause between Truth Social and Trump requiring him to post on the platform for six hours before he could do so elsewhere expired last year. Trump’s audience on X, where he has 88 million followers, is far larger than on Truth Social, where he has 7.5 million followers.
In quarterly results released Friday, revenue at Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, fell from $1.19 million to $837,000 in the three months through June, with a net loss of $16.4 million reported. TMTG shares closed 5.1 percent lower in New York on Monday.
This article has been modified to correct Trump Media & Technology’s quarterly figures
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