Elon Musk guaranteed entertainment. Instead, it presented technical difficulties.
Musk planned to host Republican Party nominee Donald Trump for a “Live on X” interview, formerly Twitter Spaces, at 8 p.m. But for the second time in the 2024 presidential election, the social media site was experiencing problems and many users were apparently unable to listen for the interview.
Musk posted this “there appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working to close it”, adding that he may continue the interview with a smaller group of listeners. DDOS stands for “distributed denial of service”.
The interview started about 45 minutes late.
The swirl of posts about technical difficulties echoed Musk’s previous X Live event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who launched his Republican presidential primary campaign in a live X with Musk interview. As appeared to happen with the Trump event, the site’s audio-only live streaming portal crashed.
“I assume all the Trump supporters who ridiculed DeSantis for the decline of his Twitter space with Musk will do the same here. LOLOLOLOL,” wrote conservative commentator Erick Ericksonwith a clown face emoji.
Musk posted before the event with Trump that he would “do some scaling tests of the system tonight and tomorrow in advance.” But these precautionary measures failed to save the platform from collapse.
Some X users were able to enter the live streaming portal, but how Bloomberg’s Stephanie Lai posted“We’re ten minutes in and there’s still background music playing.”
Many other users were unable to sign in, receiving a grayscale webpage where the portal normally appeared or an unavailable notification in the mobile app.
Trump campaign spokesperson stated that the Republican Party nominee and Musk were “Breaking the internet.”
Musk’s interview with Trump was supposed to be the third in a series featuring 2,024 presidential candidates who interested the technology mogul this year. But Musk has now promised to give his full support – and X fuel real estate – to Trump’s third campaign. The multibillionaire has the potential to boost Trump’s re-election chances with contributions from his personal fortune and by mobilizing his devoted online followers.
When the interview finally began, with about 1 million people tuning in to the live broadcast, Trump and Musk discussed the assassination attempt that the former president survived before launching verbal attacks on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris , who is now the Democratic candidate.
During the unstructured interview, Musk frequently agreed with Trump on issues such as immigration, inflation and crime. Both men, during the hour-plus interview, rambled at times about the criminal cases Trump faces, as well as ongoing foreign wars where the U.S. is providing aid.
“That war had no chance of happening if I was there,” Trump said of the war between Russia and Ukraine. And he said “this stupid administration” allowed inflation to happen.
Trump also criticized Harris for promising over the weekend in Nevada to end tip taxes — a proposal Trump first introduced at a Las Vegas rally in June. He also repeated his criticism of Harris over his role as border czar in the Biden administration.
“She was the border czar and you cannot allow them to get away with your disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say she wasn’t really involved,” Trump said of Harris.
Trump also praised Musk for his tough business practices, specifically breaking strikes at his businesses.
“You walk in and just say, “Do you want to quit?” They go on strike. I’m not going to talk about the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘Okay, you’re gone. You’re all gone,’” the former president said. “And you are the greatest.”
Musk has previously donated to a mix of Republicans and Democrats, according to disclosures to the Federal Election Commission. His last publicized political donation was made in November 2020, an election cycle, when he wrote checks to Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), among others. In previous elections, Musk wrote checks for $33,900 each to the House Republican and Democratic campaign arms.
The billionaire is now backing a new super PAC to support Trump, where he will potentially make his first political contributions in the 2024 election cycle. The America PAC will file its first financial disclosures in October.
“She will be worse than him,” Trump said of Harris. “Because she believes in the radical left and he doesn’t.”
“I think you’re right,” Musk said.
