CNN accidentally cut audio from a conversation between 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday, giving the impression that the two were downplaying the nuclear bomb.
After a roughly 40-minute delay caused by the cyberattack, Trump joined Musk on Twitter's “Spaces” on Monday night for a lengthy discussion on a range of topics, including nuclear energy. CNN's Dana Bash opened the panel discussion on “Inside Politics” with a brief audio clip that misleadingly suggested the two were placing little importance on the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Watch: Fake News CNN Hand-Picks President Donald Trump and Elon MuskIn a conversation last night, they claimed to have said that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not a big deal.
The overall context tells us they were talking about nuclear energy.
All the fake news… pic.twitter.com/Y0UilefYJp
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 13, 2024
“I want to play out one classic exchange. There are a lot of classic Donald Trump exchanges, but this one stood out to me,” Bash told the CNN panel.
The network cut a 10-second audio clip from the more than two-hour live stream and displayed photos of Trump and Musk on screen, along with a transcript.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, and now they look like complete cities again,” Musk said at the start of the CNN video.
“Yeah, that would be great,” Trump replied.
“So it's really, you know, not that,” Musk continued.
“That would be great,” Trump said.
“So basically it's not as scary as people think it is,” Musk concluded the CNN clip, before returning to the bash.
“So this is more Elon Musk than Donald Trump, and it's like he's suggesting that it's OK to try to erase the impact of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which happened almost 80 years ago, 80 years ago next year,” Bash said.
Unedited audio of the conversation revealed that Trump and Musk were in fact discussing nuclear energy. (Related: Donald Trump tweets for first time since federal government takes his mugshot)
Musk called nuclear energy “one of the safest ways to generate electricity.” He said the name has created a “huge misunderstanding” and that regulations are holding it back from being used to its full potential.
“We might have to change the name! Names are a difficult thing. You see what happens, we're going to have to rebrand in some areas. We're going to have to get a nickname. We're going to name it after you or something,” Trump told Musk.
“You look at what happened in Japan, they say, 'You won't be able to come on the land for the next 3,000 years,' and have you seen that? And in Russia, they've had problems. A lot of bad things have happened there. And they've had problems. And they're saying in 2,000 years people will start taking over the land again. You realize that's pretty awful,” Trump continued.
“It's not that bad actually. After Fukushima happened in Japan, people in California asked me if I was worried about nuclear power plants in Japan. I said, 'No, that's crazy.' In fact, it's not even dangerous in Fukushima.”
Musk told President Trump that after the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Flew To demonstrate the safety of nuclear power, he visited Fukushima and ate locally grown vegetables.
For those who (mistakenly) think this is a radiation hazard, pick the place you think is most dangerous: I will travel there and eat the locally grown food shown on TV.
I did this in Japan many years ago, right after the Fukushima disaster, and the risks of radiation are much lower than most people realize.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2022
Trump joked that Musk “hasn't been doing so well lately,” before a 10-second exchange ensued, clipped by CNN.
Shortly after suggesting that Trump and Musk were trying to downplay the nuclear bomb, Bash appeared to stare at notes on the table before acknowledging that, in the proper context, their comments were about nuclear energy. Bash did not play viewers the full audio of the exchange.
“They were talking about nuclear energy,” Bash told the CNN panelists. “They had a substantive discussion about nuclear energy. And I want to start by getting your reaction to what Trump said. What Trump was saying there was that nuclear energy has a branding problem. And he's not wrong.”
