Elon Musk says live interview with Donald Trump delayed due to massive DDOS attack on X

Elon Musk announced on Monday (August 12) that his highly anticipated interview with Donald Trump was disrupted by a cyber attack on his social media platform. The site displayed a “not available” page shortly after the scheduled start time of 8 pm Eastern Time for many users.

“Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later,” Musk posted.

Musk, who had previously expressed support for the Democratic party, has recently backed Trump after an attempt on the latter’s life at a rally.

Following Trump’s ban from Twitter (now X) in January 2021, Musk reinstated him on the platform, which he now runs and has renamed.

The conversation between Musk and Trump was intended to rejuvenate Trump’s struggling campaign.

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Musk apologised and pledged to host a live conversation with a limited number of listeners and to post the unedited audio later, after testing the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier that day.

What was billed as a “no limits” conversation, finally began at 8:42 pm ET, more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time. With many people unable to listen in live, the event proved to be an embarrassing setback for both men.

Around 1.2 million people were listening to the conversation at 9:30 pm ET, according to a counter on X.

Until that point, the conversation had already touched extensively upon the assassination attemp on Trump, immigration, and the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Trump sounded at times as if he was speaking with a lisp, many listeners on X pointed out. Some said it made him sound like a cartoon, others suggested it could be due to audio compression issues.

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Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social platform, which was launched in February 2022, but his posts there reach a much smaller audience than on X.

The interview on Musk’s social media platform allows Trump to reach a different audience than the conservative faithful who attend his rallies and watch his interviews on Fox News.

Some X users also reported seeing advertisements pop up supporting Trump.

With inputs from agencies