AP Photo/Chris Carlson and Christian Petersen/Getty Images
- Trump sat down with Logan Paul, and they talked about everything from Putin to aliens and Elon Musk.
- Given Trump's need to appeal to younger voters, Paul isn't the worst option for him.
- The "Impaulsive" interview also marks another instance of Trump's outreach to younger voters.
Logan Paul sitting down with former President Donald Trump was not on our bingo cards this week, but here we are.
Trump sat down with the controversial influencer for a close to an hourlong interview on X, which was released on Thursday. During the session, Paul and his co-host Mike Majlak talked to Trump about various topics, including Russian leader Putin, aliens, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
"Been looking forward to this all my life," Trump announced while walking on set to the "Impaulsive" podcast.
Dressing the interview set were Paul's Prime energy drink bottles in red, white, and blue packaging. And on the coffee table — signature red MAGA hats that Trump gifted the duo.
The Donald Trump Interview 🇺🇸
— IMPAULSIVE (@impaulsive) June 13, 2024
Our first full-length podcast on X… pic.twitter.com/aRiforlhca
During the podcast, Trump ran through some of his greatest hits. Here are some of them:
- Trump reiterated an old argument that he was "tough" on Russian leader Vladimir Putin but added that they still had a "very good" relationship. Trump also said he thought Russia's war on Ukraine "would never have happened" if he was president.
- Trump also claimed that his felony conviction resulted in a bumper fundraising crop. He said it was "too bad" that he couldn't have raised "hundreds of millions" of dollars another way but celebrated the big bucks nonetheless. And Trump did draw in his fair share of donors, as his campaign site crashed when he asked for donations after his guilty verdict in his hush-money trial was announced in New York.
- Trump also talked about aliens and UFOs, a long-standing interest of his. The former president described an occasion when he met a pilot — a man he described as "Tom Cruise, but taller." The pilot, Trump says, recounted how he'd spotted a UFO that was "round in form and going, like, four times faster than my superjet fighter plane." And Trump's always been interested in aliens — in 2020, he said on Fox News that he planned to "take a good, strong look at whether UFOs exist." However, Trump told Paul that he still "can't say" he's a believer in alien life.
- Trump was also asked about Tesla chief Elon Musk. He launched into a spiel about how he couldn't figure out how Musk's rockets could land when they had "no wings." Then, he said Musk — who he's met in private, despite their previously frosty relationship — was a "spectacular guy."
For his part, Paul walked away with some Trump merchandise, including a shirt with Trump's mugshot printed on it and the slogan "NEVER SURRENDER."
"Is this your mugshot?" Paul asked Trump.
"Yeah, can you believe it?" Trump responded, smiling.
"You're a gangster," Paul said.
"This is what we're reduced to," Trump added before Paul and Majlak unfurled their matching shirts in front of the camera.
Trump's out to charm Gen Z, and that demographic might already be souring on Biden
Freshly convicted of 34 charges of falsifying business records, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee seems to have a new campaign strategy — appealing to younger Gen Z voters.
For one, Trump debuted his new TikTok account on June 1 with a video of himself at a UFC tournament.
At the point of writing, Trump's 6.2 million follower count has outstripped Biden's meager 376,000.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email to Business Insider's John L. Dorman on June 3: "We will leave no front undefended, and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content."
Trump's leaning into TikTok comes even after he tried to get the social media platform — the international version of the Bytedance-owned Douyin — banned. The former president signed an executive order in August 2020that would have forced TikTok to sell to an American company.
Trump's second TikTok post, uploaded on Thursday, was a promotional clip of his freshly released interview with Paul.
Appealing to Gen Z could work for Trump, especially if one accounts for the "Trump amnesia" effect among Gen Zers. Now aged between 12 and 27 — some Gen Zers may have been too young during his presidency to be politically in tune with Trump-era policies.
And Gen Zers who vocally backed Biden during his 2020 run may also be souring on him in 2024.
For example, a coalition of social media content creators, which in 2020 was called "TikTok for Biden," has changed its name to "Gen Z for Change."
Aidan Kohn-Murphy, 20, the coalition's founder, told The Washington Post, said he thought Biden is now "out of step with young people on a number of key issues."
Representatives of Trump, Paul, and Biden didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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