"This Was A Coup": Donald Trump's Big Claim Over Biden Exit

Donald Trump, during an interview with Elon Musk on X today, boasted that Joe Biden being forced to drop out of the US Presidential race was a "coup".

"I beat Biden so bad in the debate, he was forced out of the race - one of the greatest debate performances ever. Biden's exit, it was a coup." the 78-year-old said.

Musk doubled down on this claim by the former US President saying, ""They basically took him behind a shed and shot him."

During the interview, Donald Trump also recalled the assassination attempt last month where the Republican candidate narrowly survived, describing it as a 'hard hit'.

"It was a hard hit. It was very, I guess you would say, surreal, but it wasn't surreal. You know, I was telling somebody, you have instances like this... where you feel it's a surreal situation. And I never felt that way," Trump said of the moment when he said the bullet hit his ear..

"I knew immediately that it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was at the ear... For those people that don't believe in God, I think we all have to start thinking about that," he added.

The interview got off to an eventful start as it was hit by major tech issues even before it could start, forcing the billionaire entrepreneur to run the interview only for a small number of users as several others were unable to tune in.

https://t.co/PLHekD9jzW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024

More than 1 million people were listening as the conversation started, according to a counter on X.

"Congratulations on breaking every record in the book," Trump said, an apparent reference to the number of people who tried to tune into their conversation.

The interview was intended to help reinvigorate Trump's stuttering campaign as his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, has jumped ahead in opinion polls and energised Democratic voters with a series of high-energy rallies. The Trump campaign has called it the "interview of the century".

"This is unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!" 53-year-old Musk, who has an estimated net worth of $235 billion, posted in a preview of the interview on Sunday.

Trump's access to his X account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Musk taking ownership of the company. The account had been suspended by the platform's previous owners following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by his supporters.Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social social media platform, which was launched in February 2022.

Trump, 78, posted on X for the first time on Monday in more than a year ahead of the interview, sharing a campaign video in which he portrayed himself as the victim of persecution by forces seeking to "destroy" the United States.

Musk, one of the Democrats' fiercest critics, endorsed Trump last month just minutes after the Republican narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a rally.