Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s much-anticipated online event with former President Donald Trump was postponed on Monday due to technical difficulties, as some users of Musk’s X app said they were unable to access the discussion.
The discussion, which began about 40 minutes after the scheduled start time of 8 p.m. ET, it was largely a monologue from Trump, not unlike his public rallies, with Musk occasionally interjecting with a friendly question about subjects where the two men usually agree. They were united by their common opposition to immigration, as both said the US would cease to be a real country if immigration continued at current levels.
Speaking seemingly off the cuff, Trump hurled casual insults at his enemies, including saying that President Joe Biden looks “stupid.” He also repeated debunked claims, including the theory that “the Congo,” which is not a country, emptied its prisons of murderers and sent them to the USA
Musk, the Tesla CEO, tried to urge Trump to act on climate change and move away from fossil fuels, but it appeared to have little impact as Trump said energy innovation was “not my world.”
“I’m waiting for you to create solar panels on the roofs of your cars,” Trump said.
The technological problems echoed similar difficulties from May 2023, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched his Republican presidential bid on X and was repeatedly interrupted because the site’s servers apparently could not handle the increase in traffic.
The audio-only discussion finally began and lasted over an hour. It drew more than 1.3 million listeners at its peak, according to X’s public count. The event came as Trump scaled back his personal appearances after a suspected assassin shot him at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania. .
Trump and Musk spent the beginning of the event recounting the assassination attempt, including what the Secret Service could have done differently to prevent the shooting and Trump’s reaction immediately afterwards by raising his fist.
“I just want to say that I think a lot of people admire your courage under attack there,” Musk said.
Trump later joked, “Illegal immigration saved my life,” nodding at the issue and at a graphic he was talking about when the shots started flying.
A Trump spokesperson posted what appeared to be a photo of Trump during the conversation.
The Trump campaign called the event in advance “the interview of the century”, while Musk promised it would be “improvised and without subject limits”.
Musk said the initial technical difficulties were caused by a “massive DDOS attack on X,” referring to a “distributed denial of service” attack in which hostile users attempt to overload a system to cause chaos, although Musk did not provided evidence of an attack. NBC News was unable to verify Musk’s claim.
An expert in volumetric DDoS attacks, the most common type of DDoS that simply involves directing a huge amount of fake traffic to a computer network, said a scan of recent Internet traffic showed no signs of an attack targeting X, which appeared to be work otherwise. normally. The expert asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, a company that tracks Internet traffic, noted in X that “Any sufficiently overloaded server is indistinguishable from a DDoS”.
Some X users said they believed the problem was X’s technical capabilities, not an attack. The word “crashed” appeared on X’s trending list at one point, in reference to the app’s software, as users posted in frustration about not being able to participate in the event.
As users struggled to join, scammers appeared to be seizing the moment. A fake Tesla YouTube account posted a live stream of what appeared to be a doctored video of Elon Musk asking users to scan a QR code to “double” their cryptocurrency. Many crypto scams use similar tactics in an attempt to steal bitcoin.
The event demonstrated how much Trump and Musk have reconciled after years of ups and downs in their relationship. It appeared to be the first joint public event since Trump was in the White House, although the two men have met privately at least once this year in Palm Beach, Florida.
Musk endorsed Trump last month for another term in the White House and, as one of the richest people in the world, brought his checkbook to the presidential race, contributing to a political action committee with the aim of increasing participation in the November 5 elections.
A Trump victory in the fall could be a boost for Musk’s business empire. His companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, are involved in multiple regulatory fights with the Biden administration, and Trump has promised to advance a deregulation agenda.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also received an outpouring of support on social media, with supporters posting a flurry of memes and videos.
The relationship between Musk and Trump was not always so warm. In 2022, Musk said he would like to see Trump “hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset,” and Trump responded, writing in Truth Social that he put Musk in a difficult situation when Musk visited the White House: “I could have said , ‘fall to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
Musk later said he would support DeSantis in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and personally hosted the event at the X to launch DeSantis’ campaign.
A key question hanging over the Trump-Musk alliance has been the future of federal subsidies for electric vehicles, including those made by Tesla. Trump criticized government measures to increase electrification, while Tesla continues to receive billions of dollars a year in regulatory credits.
Trump highlighted the difference on Monday, telling Musk he has an “amazing” product but “that doesn’t mean everyone should have an electric car.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
