THE DONALD AND ELON SHOW — Over the course of the past month, the presidential race has been transformed from a marathon to a sprint. What had been a grueling endurance contest, with plenty of opportunities for stumbles and recoveries, is now a race of power and precision. Like a 100-meter dash, where victory is measured in hundredths of a second, every step taken requires care and intention (just ask NOAH LYLES). Which is why Republicans have begged former President DONALD TRUMP to wise up, stop litigating the past and zero in on defining his new opponent in the race. Consider, then, how Trump chose to spend three hours last night: in the company of controversial tech mogul ELON MUSK, his now-enthusiastic endorser and would-be financial patron. The one-on-one conversation on Musk’s X platform was billed as “unscripted with no limits on subject matter.” It came hours after Trump re-activated his account for the first time since he was banned in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. What ensued wasn’t exactly a tightly calibrated spectacle. It began more than 40 minutes late due to technical difficulties — with eager listeners locked out and Musk blaming hackers — drawing inevitable comparisons to another Florida Man Trump won’t be happy about. Once the conversation got going it was a two-hour-plus meander through the former president’s usual obsessions, which only occasionally touched on his actual opponent, VP KAMALA HARRIS. “It was hyped by Trump’s team as ‘the interview of the century,’” WSJ’s Vivian Salama, Alexa Corse and Alex Leary write, “but the audio-only event felt more like overhearing a telephone call, often with rambling, between two figures who have grown closer as Musk’s politics have shifted to the right.” The two men spent much of the time praising each other. Musk launched the conversation with an extended discussion of the candidate’s brush with assassination, a moment he called “incredibly inspiring,” while Trump went on about Musk’s “fertile mind” and the size of his online audience. (The talk at its peak had about 1.3 million listeners, which would be a not-especially-impressive audience for a prime-time cable news show, though X claimed a total audience of more than 16 million.) The content otherwise would ring familiar to anyone who has seen a Trump rally speech. The former president celebrated his relationships with strongmen leaders like North Korea’s KIM JONG UN and Russia’s VLADIMIR PUTIN. He promised the “largest deportation” in history if re-elected. He once again claimed, without evidence, that countries around the world are emptying jails and mental institutions and sending them to the U.S. border. He repeated lies about the 2020 election, repeating that he had beaten President JOE BIDEN nearly four years ago, natch. Related reads: “Trump Regales Elon Musk With Familiar Falsehoods,” by NYT’s Linda Qiu … “Trump’s interview with Musk devolves into yet another X catastrophe,” by Brittany Gibson Musk on occasion tried to steer Trump into more broadly appealing territory, suggesting that not all illegal immigrants are criminals or mentally ill; that climate change is not in fact a hoax, even if oil-and-gas companies get blamed unfairly for it; and that Trump would do well to create a blue-ribbon commission on government efficiency. Trump instead returned to his usual hobby-horses. And while he attacked Harris throughout the 125-minute conversation, he rarely did so in any disciplined way. The most sustained salvo came more than an hour into the conversation after a discussion of the relative risks of nuclear energy (fallout is “not as scary as people think,” Musk said) and a Trump riff on his court cases and Biden’s physical condition (“I looked at him today on the beach … The guy could barely walk”). Only then did he deliver the bread-and-butter of his campaign attack: that Harris is at heart a far-left radical who is changing her positions for political purposes. “Our country is becoming a very dangerous place, and she is a radical left San Francisco liberal, and … now she's looking like he's she wants to be more Trump than Trump,” Trump said. “And if she's going to be our president, very quickly, you're not going to have a country anymore, and she'll go back to all the things that she believes in.” Later he betrayed frustration at Harris’ recent surge in favorability, making note of Harris’ “free ride” this week on the Time magazine cover: “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” he said. “Actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, MELANIA. She didn’t look like Kamala [which he pronounced “Camilla”]. But of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that, right?” In the end, there was plenty of red meat for Trump’s staunchest supporters, with plenty left over to feed the two men’s sizable egos. What there wasn’t was a clear message for voters not already in the Trump column. As Trump went on one of his many tangents about Biden, we were put in mind of another Olympic footrace — the 1500-meter finals last week, where longtime rivals JAKOB INGEBRIGTSEN of Norway and JOSH KERR of the Great Britain tangled for three-and-a-half laps. They hardly noticed as American COLE HOCKER sidled himself into position for the home stretch — and ran past for the gold. Good Tuesday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza. PROGRESSIVE CHECK-IN — It’s been a stretch for the progressive flank in the House. As Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris put it this morning, they “just watched pro-Israel super PACs spend jaw-dropping sums to wipe out two top liberals in Congress. And leaders fear they have no way to stop it from happening again in 2026.” Reps. JAMAAL BOWMAN (D-N.Y.) and CORI BUSH (D-Mo.) saw a combined $25 million in ads dropped on them by an AIPAC-linked super PAC, making them the two most expensive House primaries ever. “I think they smell success,” said Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.), the godfather of congressional progressives. “The point is not just them going after Jamaal and Cori, which is terrible. It is the intimidating presence they have over every member of Congress. ... It bothers me that there hasn’t been more outrage.” There also hasn’t been much of an effort “to match AIPAC’s power, with no big-money fundraising machine and no powerful nationwide door-knocking operation,” Ally and Sarah write. “And while progressives boast large numbers and significant power in Congress, they fear that those pro-Israel super PACs will continue to target high-profile lawmakers one by one.” On the other hand, some of the left are feeling upbeat about the foreign policy of a possible Harris administration. In a fascinating story out this morning, Nahal Toosi, Phelim Kine and Joseph Gedeon look at how a cadre of progressives in the national security space are already angling for new federal gigs should Harris win in November. As they note, the Democratic foreign policy establishment for Democrats has been “dominated by people connected to BILL and HILLARY CLINTON, many of whom then worked for BARACK OBAMA (including Hillary Clinton herself). After the interlude of the [Trump] years, Biden pulled in many people he knew from his time as vice president under Obama and decades in the Senate, where he was a foreign policy specialist.” In Harris, they see the possibility of a fresh start — and the opportunity to influence policy from inside an administration for the first time ever, in some cases: “Some of Biden’s appointees are likely to leave, and Harris may want to signal that she’s her own president, not merely an echo of her predecessor.” PLAYBOOK METRO SECTION — “Campaign to recall D.C. lawmaker Charles Allen fails to qualify for ballot,” by WaPo’s Meagan Flynn: “The campaign began with a bang this winter, powered by a group of Democrats with political chops and attracting residents fed up with crime in areas like Capitol Hill and Navy Yard. But it drew intense opposition from [Ward 6 Council member CHARLES] ALLEN’s supporters, who saw the recall as a misguided attempt to blame a single official for a much larger problem while offering no solutions or alternative candidate. The campaign gathered about 5,500 signatures, short of the 6,225 required.”
| 
