Multiple people on social media believe they heard Donald Trump speaking with a lisp during his interview with Elon Musk.
The former president spoke to the CEO of X, formerly Twitter, on Monday, in a livestream which saw 18.6 million people tune in.
At certain points during the interview, Trump’s words sounded a bit odd, with folks questioning whether it was due to technical issues, or because Trump has a lisp or even whether he was slurring.
Apu Gomes; Stephen Maturen
At the start of what Musk stressed was a “conversation” and not an adversarial interview, Trump said: “Congratulations because I see you broke every record on the book with so many millions of people and it’s an honor, we view that as an honor.
“And you do want silencing of certain voices, usually those are voices that have something to say that are constructive and so, we have to consider it an honour.”
In multiple recordings on X, including the ones uploaded by Musk and Trump themselves, Trump sounds different with the words “millions” and “silencing.”
This caused a stir on social media, with the BBC, which was liveblogging the chat at the time, recording more tan 20,000 posts with the term “slurring”. Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung told the British outlet: “Must be your hearing.”
Some users also speculated that the “lisp” may have emerged due to a digital defect from audio compression; the interview itself was delayed due to technical issues and ended abruptly due to—Elon Musk claimed—’a cyberattack.’
This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.
