Elon Musk’s conversational interview with former President Trump on Monday evening pulled in a combined 1 billion views, according to the tech billionaire. 

‘Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion,’ Musk posted on his social media platform X early Tuesday morning following the interview. 

The message followed a previous post outlining that, ‘Between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET, President Donald Trump’s Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump’s conversation on 𝕏, generating a total of 998 million views.’

Trump spoke with Musk on Monday evening on Twitter Space for two hours in an expansive audio-only interview that included the 45th president speaking at length about immigration woes, spiraling inflation issues, the assassination attempt against his life and policies he would implement if he wins at the polls on Nov. 5. 

​​’I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East,’ Trump told Musk, who endorsed Trump earlier this year. 

Trump said that despite Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent rhetoric to address the spiraling migrant crisis at the border if elected, she and President Biden have had years to address migration but ‘won’t do anything.’ 

​​’She had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent and he’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something, because he’s not too good,’ he said. 

Trump’s interview with Musk kicked off after 8:30 p.m. Monday, following a ‘massive’ distributed denial-of-service attack on the platform that caused delays, Musk explained on X. Despite the disruption, the interview received a billion viewers, according to Musk’s tally.

Trump also addressed Biden’s exit from the 2024 race during the conversation, saying it was a Democratic ‘coup’ that pressured Biden to drop out. Biden dropped out of the running last month as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age and Democrats and traditional allies of the party called on him to exit the race. 

‘This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,” Trump said. 

‘They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,’ Musk added before Trump slammed Biden as ‘the worst president in history.’ 

The 45th president also took a shot at Harris for snubbing the media and interviews since she emerged as the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee. Harris has avoided formal press conferences or sit-down interviews, including for a Time magazine cover story, for 23 days, as of Tuesday.  

‘It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a very friendly interview. She’s got all friendly interviewers,’ Trump said.

Musk said after the interview that he is ‘happy to host Kamala’ in the same interview format. 

Trump made a return to X earlier on Monday after nearly a year of not posting on his once-favored social media platform. Before Musk bought Twitter, now X, in 2022, Trump was suspended from his Twitter account following the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He seldom posted on the platform after Musk reinstated his account, only sharing his mugshot in August of last year. 

Ahead of his interview with Trump, Musk hyped the interview as one that ‘should be highly entertaining!’ as it ‘​​is unscripted with no limits on subject matter.’

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is heckling the State Department for commemorating the anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on Tuesday, accusing the Biden administration of facilitating Israel’s alleged violations of the historic peace agreement.

‘Is this a joke?’ Tlaib wrote on X regarding a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to mark the occasion. 

‘You supported sending more U.S. made bombs being used to commit war crimes. The government of Israel bombed hospitals, schools, and tents full of displaced Palestinians. How can you say you are for respecting international human rights laws?’

Blinken had said, ‘Today we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The United States reaffirms our steadfast commitment to respecting international humanitarian law and mitigating suffering in armed conflict. We call on others to do the same.’

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 is a set of four peace treaties affirming standards for the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war and other noncombatants. 

Her comments come as Israel’s military readies for a possibly imminent attack by Iran in retaliation for the killing of Hamas’ political leader in Tehran.

Despite being a Democrat, Tlaib has been one of President Biden’s harshest critics in terms of Israel.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, is a leader in the growing faction of the progressive left who are critical of Democrats’ traditionally close ties with Israel.

Those fractures have been on full display in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel.

Twenty-two House Democrats voted with Republicans to censure Tlaib for her comments on Israel on Nov. 7 last year, a month after the attack.

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress last month, Tlaib mounted a silent protest by holding a sign that read ‘war criminal’ on one side and ‘guilty of genocide’ on the other.

She held the sign up for most of the speech despite appearing to be asked not to do so by House staff several times.

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment on her recent remarks. 

Republicans have more districts in their corner in the first Fox News Power Rankings House forecast, but overall, the race for a majority is a toss-up.

Political junkies will tell you that it has been a chaotic couple of years in the House. 

With speaker battles, a debt ceiling crisis, the sixth-ever expulsion of a House lawmaker and the first ever shrinking of the ‘Squad,’ there has been plenty to talk about on television and social media.

At the same time, Americans continue to hold congress in low regard, with only 16% saying they approved of its job in July. (It has been two decades since congress had an approval rating of over 50%).

These might seem like vulnerabilities for the ruling party, but when it comes to their congressional ballot, Americans are putting drama and dissatisfaction aside.

The top issues in the race continue to be the economy, immigration and abortion, and voters are locked in to their preferred party for each of them.

Because of that, you can expect similar electoral dynamics in the House as in the Senate. A win for former President Trump will help the GOP stay in power in the lower chamber, as we saw in 2016. A win for Vice President Kamala Harris will likely give the Democrats a win in the House too, as President Biden was able to deliver in 2020.

In the meantime, the race to rule the House starts off as a toss-up.

Every House seat is up for election every two years, but only a fraction are competitive. In this forecast, 16% of the 435 districts are firmly in play.

There are 19 toss-up races, and with Republicans enjoying a razor-thin majority in the House today, the results in those districts alone will decide which party gets the gavel.

Many of the highly competitive races share key features.

The redistricting process occurs at the beginning of each decade, but a mountain of litigation over racial or partisan gerrymandering issues has left some states redrawing boundaries as recently as May.

The upshot is that several seats are likely to change hands early on election night.

each have redrawn seats with higher Black voter populations after court rulings. Both seats are represented by vacating Republicans and are Democrats’ best flip opportunities of the night. 

Meanwhile, a state Republican supermajority approved a more favorable map in North Carolina. Three seats currently represented by Democrats will now be open in November, and Republicans are favored in all of them.

Redistricting will also affect a highly competitive race in New York.

A district containing Syracuse that currently belongs to Rep. Brandon Williams will shift leftward this year, putting the first-term congressman in a much tougher fight to hold on for a second. New York’s 22nd district is rated Lean D.

One of the reasons Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterms was candidate quality. In other words, the party fielded nominees who were poor matches for their district, had baggage, or were ineffective campaigners.

This year, the party is working with a stronger bench.

The most notable example is . In 2022, moderate Democrat Mary Peltola pulled off a historic upset when she beat former Governor Sarah Palin in the final round of the state’s ranked choice ballot tabulation.

This year, Republicans hope that either second-time candidate Nick Begich or Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom will retake the seat; both have been stronger campaigners.

Peltola is well-liked in her state and has been an advocate on local issues, chiefly the state’s fishing industry. This seat is rated Lean D.

Back on the mainland, Ohio’s 9th district has been in Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s hands since 1983. She has crafted a brand around her pro-agriculture and anti-free trade views.

But with Ohio’s rightward drift, this is a very competitive seat.

In the midterms, Republicans fielded a candidate who was in lock step with Trump but struggled to appeal to centrists. This time, state Rep. Derek Merrin will be on the ballot for the GOP, bringing conservative principles and a wealth of campaign experience along with him.

This seat is a toss-up.

Republicans still have candidate issues in some key races. Washington’s 3rd district will be a rematch between first-term Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Blue Dog Democrat who recently suggested that Biden resign from office, and Joe Kent, her Republican challenger.

Kent, a veteran and former CIA officer, was mired in controversy in 2022. That will continue to be a liability, but Republicans are hopeful that he will run a more disciplined campaign this time. This race is also a toss-up.

Trump struggled in the suburbs when he last ran for president. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis, he lagged Biden by 10 points with all suburban voters and 19 points with suburban women, leaving him with critical deficits in the battleground states.

House Republicans in city and suburban districts did not fare so poorly. Challengers like Nicole Malliotakis in New York’s 11th district, Young Kim and Michelle Steel in the California suburbs and Maria Elvira Salazar in Miami flipped Democratic districts.

This all suggests that Trump is more helpful to House Republicans than the conventional wisdom might say. He brings out core ‘MAGA’ voters who vote red down the ballot, while allowing candidates to make inroads with moderates and independents.

The best example is in Nebraska’s 2nd district, containing Omaha and its surrounding suburbs.

At the presidential level, this is a Lean D district (and unlike most, it gets an electoral vote in November). The area has a larger proportion of college-educated voters, who dislike Trump and show up to vote against him.

However, in the House, the race is rated Lean R.

That is thanks to Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate conservative, veteran and Trump critic who has won the district four times from 2016 onwards.

He has another tough battle against state lawmaker Tony Vargas this year, who is running a disciplined and well-funded campaign.

Unlike the presidential race, the Republicans have an edge here so far.

There are several departing Democrats in competitive districts, including Elissa Slotkin in Michigan’s 7th district and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s 7th. 

These moderate congresswomen in swingy parts of their states are running for Senate seats this year, leaving highly competitive races behind.

Republicans are hopeful that the departure of these well-known incumbents will give their challengers a boost, but with both parties fielding high-quality replacements, these races will be close (Democrats have an edge in Virginia’s 7th).

Democrats will also play defense in dozens of districts with first-term incumbents, like Rep. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s 8th district. This newly created district includes the northern Denver suburbs and surrounding areas, and Caraveo won it by less than a point last time. This race is a toss-up.

California and New York run deep blue at the statewide level, but just outside highly populated liberal cities, plenty of districts are in play.

In California, keep an eye on the 13th district, home of Modesto; the 27th district, north of Los Angeles; and the 41st district, which includes Palm Springs.

Republicans won all three seats by narrow margins in the midterms and are now locked in tough re-election battles with well-funded Democratic opponents. The forecast has Democrats with an edge in the 13th and 27th districts at Lean D, while the 41st is a toss-up.

Across the continent in New York, and Brandon Williams is not the only Republican fighting for his political career.

New York’s 17th, 18th and 19th districts, all in the Hudson Valley region, were hotly contested in the midterms, and two out of the three are now represented by Republicans with strong bipartisan brands. Rep. Mike Lawler is the best known but also has the bluest territory to defend of the two, with Rep. Marc Molinaro in another tight race nearby. Both these races are toss-ups.

In between them is Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, whose race starts at Lean D.

Voters in 11 states will cast a ballot for governor this year; tomorrow’s Power Rankings takes a look at the most competitive races on the map.

Then, on Sunday, Fox News Democracy 24 special coverage for the Democratic National Convention begins with an all-new Power Rankings Issues Tracker.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is continuing to blame the West for his nation’s difficulties subduing opposition forces in Ukraine.

The Russian president told regional governors and national defense officials on Monday that the Ukrainian military’s current campaign in the territory of the Kursk region will not affect negotiations.

‘The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians,’ Putin told them at his home outside the capital city of Moscow, according to a report from The New York Times.

‘The enemy will certainly get the response he deserves, and all our goals, without doubt, will be accomplished,’ he continued.

Ukraine launched incursions into the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk districts last week, continuing the campaign since last Tuesday. 

The events have put the Russian military command under fire over the intelligence and tactical lapses that allowed such an attack to happen. 

‘One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,’ Putin told government officials in a televised meeting this week, according to the Moscow Times. ‘The main task is, of course, for the defense ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories.’

Experts attribute the Ukrainian gains to ‘unconventional’ tactics that have caught the much larger Russian military off-guard.

‘Given the significant disparity of combat potential favoring Russia on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces appear to be switching to, or at minimum, intensifying, unconventional warfare, bringing war deeper into Russia,’ Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ told Fox News Digital last week. 

‘With the latest surprise incursion into Kursk oblast, Zelenskyy likely aims to demonstrate to Putin that as long as there’s no peace in Ukraine, the Russian people will not sleep peacefully either,’ Koffler said. ‘Kyiv is probably also seeking to beef up its negotiating position in a potential peace settlement with Moscow.’

Approximately 121,000 people have evacuated the Kursk region — residents of the Belovsky and Krasnoyaruzhsky districts have also joined the exodus.

Ukraine has been the beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars from Western powers providing weapons and resources in order to push back against Russian expansion through the remote conflict.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is blasting former President Trump’s interview with billionaire Elon Musk, saying Trump’s campaign is in service of ‘self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class.’

Trump joined Musk on X Spaces, a live audio chat feature on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for an interview Monday night, although it had a shaky start due to technical difficulties. Millions of people ultimately listened to the interview, according to the live tracker throughout the discussion.

Musk said in a post after the interview that he would also be happy to host Harris on X Spaces.

During Monday’s interview, Musk gave Trump ample time to explain his stance on various issues such as immigration, the assassination attempt he survived at a campaign rally last month, inflation and the idea of eliminating the Department of Education to allow states authority over school systems.

‘I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states … Of the 50 [states], I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,’ Trump said, adding that deep blue states like California may struggle if the department is eliminated.

The Harris campaign hit Trump following the interview for the policy proposals the former president touched on and took a jab over the technical difficulties the X Space endured.

‘Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com,’ Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement. ‘Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.’

Project 2025 is a controversial initiative organized by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that was authored by a number of conservatives, including some former Trump administration officials.

The initiative offers right-wing policy recommendations for Trump should he win the presidency, including replacing civil service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care and infusing the government with Christian values.

Trump has sought to distance himself from the initiative, which has been criticized as being an authoritarian and Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knows nothing about it, that parts of it are ‘absolutely ridiculous and abysmal’ and that its backers are on the ‘radical right.’

Monday marked Trump’s return to X after nearly a year of not posting on the social media platform, posting a series of campaign ads prior to the interview with Musk.

Before Musk purchased X in 2022, Trump was suspended from the platform following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when the platform was still known as Twitter. But even after Musk reinstated his account, Trump’s only post was sharing his mugshot in August of last year.

‘This country is going down, and these people are bad people that we’re running against. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border, and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they’ll stop crime,’ Trump said towards the end of the interview.

Trump also addressed President Biden’s decision last month to suspend his re-election campaign, saying it was a Democratic ‘coup’ that pressured the president to step aside. Biden’s decision came amid pressure from Democrats to drop out of the race over concerns about his mental acuity.

‘This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,” Trump said.

‘They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,’ Musk responded before Trump criticized Biden as ‘the worst president in history.’

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

A conservative government watchdog group secured a legal victory against the Biden-Harris administration by compelling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop deleting employee emails they say had been done in violation of the Federal Records Act.

America First Legal, the right-leaning, Washington, D.C. based public interest organization founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, sought records concerning the CDC’s endorsement of the controversial gender ideology within public schools in February 2023. In response, the CDC told AFL that it systematically deletes the emails of most employees 30 days after they depart from the agency.

As of Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is now required under a preliminary injunction granted to AFL to enlist the help of Attorney General Merrick Garland and inform Congress to recover the deleted emails and halt the destruction of records. 

‘Notably, while the Biden-Harris administration has been slapped down for illegally violating the law, CDC employees’ homes were not searched and raided without notice or consent, nor have their families had to endure the trauma and onslaught of legal fees or indictments,’ AFL said in a news release. 

‘Yet, the Biden-Harris Administration did exactly that to President Trump. We cannot have a country where government bureaucrats are allowed to circumvent the law without repercussion, and innocent civilians are subjected to invasive and unlawful political persecution for saying the ‘wrong’ thing. The two-tiered justice system in the United States has never been more prevalent,’ the group said. 

In April, AFL filed the initial lawsuit against the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and NARA.

‘The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law–and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct,’ AFL executive director Gene Hamilton said in a statement. 

AFL subsequently reached out to NARA urging an investigation into the CDC’s policy of deleting employee emails. 

‘NARA investigated the allegations but determined that because the ‘CDC instructs individual email account holders to apply retention based on the email’s content value and its applicability to a NARA-approved records schedule,’ NARA considered the matter closed. In short, NARA entrusted individual CDC employees to decide which emails can be automatically deleted,’ AFL said in a news release.x

This isn’t the first time the CDC has been in hot water over its influence in the public. Last year, the CDC reportedly had ‘significant input on pandemic-era social media policies’ at Facebook and Instagram and worked to ‘silence dissent’ related to the COVID vaccine. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied attempting to suppress the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, during the heated House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing this summer.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the CDC, HHS and NARA for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report. 

The State Department on Monday denied a Wall Street Journal report that claimed the Biden administration had offered Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro amnesty in exchange for him stepping down from his 11-year reign.

‘That is not true,’ Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during the question-and-answer portion of a press briefing Monday. ‘We have not made any offers to Maduro or others since this election.’

Patel’s comments were in stark contrast to claims made by ‘three people familiar with the Biden administration deliberation[s]’ regarding secret meetings held in Doha, Qatar in June and September 2023 between the U.S. and Venezuela, according to the Wall Street Journal report.

Details following the meetings have been scarce, though reports released last year indicated that chief adviser to Maduro, Jorge Rodríguez, and the White House National Security Council’s former senior director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan González, met at least twice to discuss an array of issues on top of the alleged amnesty proposal, including sanctions relief, according to a document posted by Maduro to X. The U.S., however, has never verified this information. 

The Wall Street Journal report further suggested that Maduro’s top officers facing judicial indictments over offenses relating to charges of conspiring to export cocaine to the U.S., could also see amnesty agreements. 

The State Department did not return Fox News Digital’s questions regarding the Wall Street Journal report, though a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council echoed the department’s claims.

‘Since the July 28 election, we have not made any specific offers of amnesty to Nicolás Maduro or others,’ Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant Spokesperson to the National Security Council Vanessa Vidal Castellanos told Fox News Digital.  

‘In coordination with our partners, we are considering a range of options to incentivize and pressure Maduro to recognize the election results and will continue to do so, but the responsibility is on Maduro and the Venezuela’s electoral authorities to come clean on the election results,’ she added. 

According to the report, an amnesty proposal was allegedly floated as a way to incentivize Maduro to step down before his term was set to end.

But Maduro was reportedly unwilling to ‘discuss arrangements where he would have to leave office’ — a position he has only doubled-down on since the national election last month.

Despite international calls for the Venezuelan president to step aside amid mounting evidence that shows he lost to opposition leader Edmundo González, Maduro has refused to relinquish his power. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed those calls last week and said, ‘In the days since the election, we have consulted widely with partners and allies around the world, and while countries have taken different approaches in responding, none have concluded that Nicolás Maduro received the most votes this election.’

‘Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.’

The UN General Assembly has offered to mediate the election results as a third party to resolve the growing unrest in Venezuela.

Despite mounting pressure to step down, Maduro’s regime has arrested thousands of protesters and dissidents, maintained military loyalty and has elected the pro-Maduro Supreme Court to resolve any election disputes. 

Maduro’s position on leaving office is reported to be ‘unchanged.’