Donald Trump sat down with X owner Elon Musk on Monday night for an interview that touched on the assassination attempt against the Republican presidential candidate as well as his views on immigration and energy.
The live-streamed session featured an overwhelmingly friendly discussion between the two right-leaning public figures that spanned more than two hours.
While Mr Trump is running for president, the chat revealed little new about his plans for a second term in the White House.
The interview got off to a shaky start, however, with users complaining they were unable to access it.
The Trump team posted that the “interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in”.
And once the meeting began, Mr Musk apologised for the late start and claimed a “massive attack” had overwhelmed the company's system, without providing evidence.
Staffers speaking under condition of anonymity told tech publication The Verge there was not a DDOS, or distributed denial-of-service, attack as Mr Musk had claimed.
Mr Trump recounted the attempt on his life in vivid detail, with the presidential hopeful saying the event had reinforced his faith in God.
“If I had not turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now – as much as I like you,” Mr Trump told Mr Musk.
Mr Musk, a former Trump critic, said the Republican nominee's toughness, as demonstrated by his reaction to last month's shooting, was critical for national security.
“There’s some real tough characters out there,” Mr Musk said. “And if they don’t think the American president is tough, they will do what they want to do.”
The conversation between the two men was friendly – Mr Musk endorsed Mr Trump for president last month – and did little to shed light on how Mr Trump might handle a second term in the White House, apart from his plans to tackle illegal immigration.
During the interview, Mr Trump repeated a debunked claim that the Congo was releasing criminals from jails and sending them to the US.
“Elon, what’s happened is unbelievable. You have from Africa, from the Congo. They’re coming from the Congo and 22 people came in from the Congo recently, and they’re murderers,” Mr Trump said.
The Trump campaign has been focusing on discrediting his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris's record on the border, with claims that as Vice President, she was responsible for allowing a record number of people into the country illegally.
Ms Harris has erased Mr Trump's lead in opinion polls and energised Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies, Reuters reported.
The interview also delved into Mr Trump's views on climate change, which he has frequently called a hoax. Mr Musk tried to steer Mr Trump towards acknowledging the risks to the environment caused by fossil fuels and the need to support a clean energy transition.
Vilifying oil and gas is wrong because the economy would collapse without the industry, Mr Musk said, but the fossil fuel supply is finite and global warming does pose some risk – and that is where Tesla comes in.
“When you look at our cars, we don’t believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment, should mean that you have to suffer,” Mr Musk said of Tesla.
But Mr Trump was unmoved, slamming President Joe Biden for shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline project.
“I allowed it [the pipeline project] in my first week because it was jobs and it moved oil,” Mr Trump said. “And by the way, in a much more environmentally friendly way, it's underground, it's not a truck that catches on fire or a train that catches on fire.”
On Monday morning, Mr Trump returned to X for the first time in a year, posting a video that highlighted his claim that the four criminal prosecutions he faces are politically motivated.
He quickly followed with a half-dozen other posts, in a possible indication he will be more active on X from here on.
His last X post before Monday was one in August 2023, when he appealed for donations and showed a mugshot after he was booked at an Atlanta jail over felony charges tied to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia.
Mr Trump's access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Mr Musk's ownership of X after being suspended by the platform's previous owners following the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress by his supporters.
The former president frequently posts on his Truth Social platform, which was launched in February 2022, but his posts there reach a much smaller audience than on X.
A look at former president Donald Trump's Truth Social feed – in pictures
RESULTS
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Innotech Profile
Date started: 2013
Founder/CEO: Othman Al Mandhari
Based: Muscat, Oman
Sector: Additive manufacturing, 3D printing technologies
Size: 15 full-time employees
Stage: Seed stage and seeking Series A round of financing
Investors: Oman Technology Fund from 2017 to 2019, exited through an agreement with a new investor to secure new funding that it under negotiation right now.
Persuasion
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Company profile
Company name: Dharma
Date started: 2018
Founders: Charaf El Mansouri, Nisma Benani, Leah Howe
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: TravelTech
Funding stage: Pre-series A
Investors: Convivialite Ventures, BY Partners, Shorooq Partners, L& Ventures, Flat6Labs
Bio:
Favourite Quote: Prophet Mohammad's quotes There is reward for kindness to every living thing and A good man treats women with honour
Favourite Hobby: Serving poor people
Favourite Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite food: Fish and vegetables
Favourite place to visit: London