Donald Trump made a critical campaign error during his "budding bromance" conversation with X CEO Elon Musk Monday night, a political analyst says.
Trump's glitchy livestream saw the former president heap praise on the world's richest man that Axios reporter Sara Fischer argues he should be regretting Tuesday morning.
"What a weird message for Donald Trump," Fischer told CNN anchor Sara Sidner. "The last thing you want to do is disrupt the labor vote."
Trump praised the Tesla and SpaceX owner, whose net worth Tuesday morning Forbes put at $222 billion, for mass firings at the social media company X which eliminated a reported 80 percent of the staff.
Musk in 2023 claimed he'd fired roughly 6,500 of then-Twitter's 8,000-member staff, Business Today reported.
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"Well you, you're the greatest cutter," said Trump with a laugh. "I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's okay, you're all gone, you're all gone. So every one of you is gone.' And you are the greatest."
Fischer argued this anti-labor take would do Trump no favors in blue-leaning swing states, especially as Vice President Kamala Harris racks up union endorsements and her running mate makes a union-member address his first solo campaign stop.
"In those blue battleground states, when you come in and praise people who were doing cuts," she said, "that doesn't necessarily help with union voters."
Harris' campaign also latched onto Trump's comment, to which they referred in a snarky public statement from campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello.
"Trump's entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself," Costello said, "self-obsessed rich guys who sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024."
