Breaking News: Musk Agrees to Host Debate on X (*updated, 2:44pm Eastern*)

By Adam Garrie, with the Staff of The Kennedy Beacon

In a series of posts on May 20 and 21, CEO Elon Musk has shown he is not afraid to insert himself into the US election process.

First came CNN’s announcement that it was inviting President Biden and former president Trump to an exclusive, one-on-one debate on June 27, 2024. 

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and team pushed back, saying his exclusion undermines democracy. Team Kennedy has said they are in talks with CNN to join the debate. Meanwhile, Center for Competitive Democracy joined other groups, including American Values 2024 (AV24), the super PAC currently supporting Kennedy, calling out CNN’s idiosyncratic and exclusionary debate requirements. 

[AV24, which funds The Kennedy Beacon, has launched a petition, letkennedydebate.com, for the public to express support for Kennedy’s right to join the CNN debate. ]

On May 20, Musk intervened with six words on X to Kennedy: You should be in the debate.

Kennedy shot back: Will you host one?

Musk responded late on May 21: Sure.

At 1:44 pm Eastern, Kennedy wrote back: X is where the debate should be. The new public square with 100x the audience of CNN. @realDonaldTrump, I know you’ve got the guts to do it. Do you want to call @POTUS or should I?

Kennedy previously appeared on an X Spaces debate co-hosted by Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks. 

In addition to Spaces-style interactive debates, X can stream live video events, a feature that Musk has been keen to promote. But beyond Musk’s eagerness to promote his social media platform, what has drawn him to Kennedy over the last year? 

What’s Today’s Best Forum for a Debate?

As reported in The Beacon, CNN cut a direct deal with the Trump and Biden campaigns to host a historically anomalous pre-convention debate on June 27. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns told the press that the candidates stipulated to debate under the condition that Kennedy is absent from the stage, even though Kennedy has said that by CNN’s own debate eligibility criteria, he will qualify to be on stage. 

But is CNN still the best way to reach a critical mass? The cable broadcaster’s ratings recently hit a 33-year low. By inserting himself into the debate about the debate, Musk is asking this question of the presidential candidates and the American people itself.

Are Musk and Kennedy Politically Aligned? 

Like Kennedy, Musk used to be a Democrat. He has said that he once saw the Democrats as the compassionate party but over the last four years, he has publicly expressed disillusionment with the policies and leading figures of the party. 

Shortly after acquiring the platform formerly known as Twitter, in October of 2022, Musk invited investigative journalists to cull through company documents in order to expose scandals at the previously publicly listed company Musk took private. 

The revelations, published as The Twitter Files, exposed systemic censorship on Twitter as well as on platforms owned by Meta and Google. This censorship was ordered by the Biden administration. 

Musk emerged as a key warrior in the public outcry against tech censorship – a battle in which Kennedy has also been actively engaged, after the Biden administration began blatantly censoring him. His road to the White House began partly as a result of trials and tribulations at the hands of government censorship. It was recently revealed that the Biden administration began censoring Kennedy within 72 hours of taking office – issuing a direct order to suppress Kennedy’s influential social media presence, as reported in The Kennedy Beacon.  

When he first announced his run for president in 2023, Kennedy said that his run was motivated by his desire to give a voice to those who have been censored. Like his father and uncles, he began his presidential run as a Democrat. Like Musk, Kennedy was eventually driven away from the party after it had allegedly rigged the primaries. In October of last year, he declared his run as an independent. 

This mirrors Musk’s own independent political streak as the Tesla CEO has criticized political tribalism and voiced his support for independent candidates from Andrew Yang to Kennedy.

When filmmakers Jay Carson and Mike Piscitelli released their 30-minute film, Who is Bobby Kennedy? Musk endorsed it in a two word post on X: “worth watching” — as reported in The Beacon. 

Who Will Musk Endorse? 

Musk has not yet formally endorsed a presidential candidate for the 2024 election. He has, however, ruled out casting a vote for Biden, calling his 2020 vote for the president a mistake. Musk also has a strained relationship with Donald Trump who once called Musk a “bullshit artist.”

While Musk offered supportive statements to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, both candidates have withdrawn from the race. 

Musk and Kennedy are aligned on a variety of issues, beyond their shared battle for free speech. Last year, Musk publicly stated that he experienced a severe vaccine injury after taking what he referred to as his second mRNA booster. Musk said he was nearly hospitalized. He has complained about vaccine mandates and said that if the Biden administration did not enforce these mandates (that were eventually partly struck down by the Supreme Court) on large employers, his companies would have never attempted to force workers to take a vaccine they did not wish to have. 

Kennedy has long shared Musk’s concerns about authoritarianism in public health. He has also written extensively on vaccine safety and remains committed to giving Americans access to tested and safe medications.

[This story will be updated as more news becomes available.]