GettyElon Musk’s interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was marred by technical issues that the tech billionaire blamed on a cyberattack.
The lengthy chat, which Mr Musk said was aimed at “open-minded independent voters”, started more than 40 minutes late because many users had difficulty accessing it.
Mr Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter, said a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack had “saturated all of our data lines”.
Near the end of the two-hour conversation, he doubled down on his support for Trump and urged moderate voters to back the Republican campaign.
“Let’s look forward to an exciting and inspiring future that people can look forward to and be optimistic and excited about what comes next,” Musk said.
The conversation didn’t start off well.
More than 20 minutes after the chat actually began, as many users had trouble accessing the livestream, Mr. Musk blamed “a massive DDOS attack on X” for the issue in a post.
Distributed denial of service attacks — also known as DDoS attacks — are attempts to overload a website, making it difficult or impossible to access.
As the conversation between the two began, Mr Musk said the alleged cyberattack showed there was resistance in the US to listening to what Trump had to say.
It is still unclear what caused the technical issues with the X audio conversation or who might be behind any attacks.
Anthony Lim, director of the Centre for Strategic Cyber and International Studies in Singapore, told the BBC: “A DDoS attack sends a large number of signals to an online target to disrupt it.”
“It is unlikely that it will affect only a single service or feature on a site.”
Mr Lim added that it was possible that a large number of users trying to listen could cause the service to temporarily crash.
Mr Musk said in a follow-up post that the system had been tested with “8 million concurrent listeners” before his live chat.
During the conversation, X Spaces showed that there were about a million people listening.
This rocky start is reminiscent of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s run for the White House in May 2023, hold on X and see live streaming issue.
The X conversation comes as Trump, the former president and Republican presidential candidate, is trying to reset his re-election campaign.
Polls show the Democratic nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris has narrowed the gap between the two candidates for the White House.
Harris’ campaign has been gaining momentum after she became the Democratic frontrunner when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.
Next week, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, could get more support at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly criticized Harris for not giving interviews and answering few questions from reporters since accepting the nomination last month.
On Monday, Trump said it was “great to have a forum like this” on X where he could speak at length.
Mr Musk, who organized the event, has become an increasingly influential voice in politics.
He has more than 190 million followers on X, where he regularly engages in political debates.
He also recently joined a new political committee supporting Trump’s campaign.
The relationship between the two men has changed over the years and they have had their share of online criticism in the past.
But the conversation between the two men on Monday was friendly and not at all confrontational.
Trump, who has been skeptical of electric vehicles and has previously vowed to cut federal subsidies, has praised the automaker Tesla, which Mr. Musk also owns.
He recently said he had “no choice” but to support electric vehicles because of Mr Musk’s endorsement and called Tesla’s products “fantastic” on Monday.
Mr Musk said he was willing to support the Trump administration in establishing a “government efficiency commission”.
Ahead of the high-profile conversation on the social media site, which is accessible to European users, EU industry chief Thierry Breton wrote to Mr Musk saying he must comply with EU digital content laws.
The EU suspects X of violating its rules in a number of areas, including combating illegal content and disinformation.
In response, X executive director Linda Yaccarino called it “an unprecedented attempt to apply laws intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the United States.”
“It also shows contempt for European citizens, assuming they are incapable of listening to conversations and drawing their own conclusions.”
Monday marks the return to X/Twitter of Trump, who was removed from the platform shortly after the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Aside from a series of campaign ads on Trump’s account on Monday, he has only posted once — a photo of a criminal and a link to his campaign website — a year after Musk reactivated his X account in 2022.
It’s unclear whether Trump, who posts frequently on his Truth Social page, will continue to post more frequently on X.
Monday’s interview covered a wide range of issues, from Trump’s assassination attempt last month at a Pennsylvania rally, to his desire for the United States to have an “Iron Dome” missile defense system like the one in Israel, and a key issue of his campaign — immigration.
Trump is also considering closing the federal Department of Education and transferring that responsibility to the states as one of his first actions if he wins election in November.
The Republican candidate also spoke about Mr Biden’s decision to drop out of the race after a disastrous debate performance and pressure from vulnerable Democratic lawmakers, calling it “a coup”.
In a weekend interview with CBS, Mr Biden said he left because he was concerned that the internal fight over his candidacy would be a “real distraction” ahead of the election.
In a statement after the event, Harris’ campaign described Mr Musk and Mr Trump as “two arrogant rich people who will sell out the middle class and not be able to stream in 2024”.
João da Silva contributed to this report.
