Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s highly anticipated online event with former President Donald Trump was delayed Monday due to technical issues, with some users of Musk’s X app saying they were unable to access the conversation.
The conversation, which began about 40 minutes after its scheduled 8 p.m. ET start time, was largely Trump’s monologue, unlike his public rallies, with Musk occasionally jumping in to ask friendly questions about topics the two men generally agree on. They pledged a common anti-immigration stance, as both said the United States would cease to be a real country if immigration continued at current levels.
Apparently off the cuff, Trump hurled random insults at his enemies, including saying President Joe Biden has a “stupid face.” He also repeated debunked claims, including the theory that “Congo,” which is not a country, had emptied its prisons of murderers and sent them to the United States.
Tesla CEO Musk tried to push Trump to act on climate change and transition away from fossil fuels, but appeared to have little effect as Trump said energy innovation was “not my world.”
“I’m kind of waiting for you guys to invent solar panels on the roofs of your cars,” Trump said.
The technical issues were a repeat of similar difficulties in May 2023, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched his Republican presidential bid on X and was repeatedly disrupted as the site’s servers apparently could not handle the surge in traffic.
The voice-only chat finally started and lasted for more than two hours. It peaked at over 1.3 million listeners, according to X’s public figure. The event comes as Trump scaled back his appearances after he was shot by a would-be assassin at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Trump and Musk used the start of the event to talk about the assassination attempt, including what the Secret Service could have done differently to prevent it, and Trump’s reaction immediately afterward by raising his fist.
“I just want to say that I think a lot of people admire your bravery under fire,” Musk said.
Trump later joked, “Illegal immigration saved my life,” a nod to the topic and the chart he was talking about when the shots started flying.
Trump’s spokesperson published a picture of Trump during the conversation.
Trump’s campaign previously hailed the event as the “interview of the century,” while Musk had promised it would be “unscripted with no subject restrictions.”
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 try to bring down the system to cause chaos, even though Musk did not. provide evidence of an attack. NBC News was unable to confirm Musk’s claim.
One expert on volumetric DDoS attacks, the most common type of DDoS that simply involves funneling massive amounts of fake traffic into a computer network, said a recent scan of Internet traffic showed no signs of an attack on X, which otherwise appeared to be working. usually. The expert asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
Alp Toker, head of Internet traffic tracker Netblocks, said in X“A sufficiently overloaded server cannot be distinguished from a DDoS.”
Some X users said they believed the problem was due to X’s technical features rather than an attack. The word “crashed” appeared on X’s trending list at one point, referring to the app’s software, when users posted in frustration that they couldn’t join the event.
As users struggled to join, scammers seemed to take advantage of the moment. Tesla’s fake YouTube account posted a live stream of what appeared to be a curved video in which Musk asked users to scan a QR code to “double” their cryptocurrency. Many crypto scams use similar tactics to try to steal bitcoins.
The event showed how much Trump and Musk have reconciled after years of ups and downs in their relationship. It appeared to be their first public event together since Trump was in the White House, although the two men met privately at least once this year in Palm Beach, Florida.
Musk endorsed Trump for a second term in the White House last month, and as one of the world’s richest people, he has brought his checkbook to the presidential race and joined a political action committee aimed at boosting voter turnout in the Nov. 5 election. .
Trump’s victory in the fall could be a boost for Musk’s business empire. His companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, have been embroiled in several regulatory battles with the Biden administration, and Trump has vowed to push for deregulation.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have also received plenty of support on social media, with supporters posting memes and videos.
The relationship between Musk and Trump has not always been so warm. In 2022, Musk said he wanted to see Trump “hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset,” and Trump responded, writing on Truth Social that he had Musk over a barrel when Musk visited the White House: “I might have said, ‘Get on your knees and beg,'” and he would have done it.”
Musk later said he would endorse DeSantis for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and personally hosted an event at X to launch DeSantis’ campaign.
A key issue in the Trump-Musk alliance has been the future of federal subsidies for electric vehicles, including those made by Tesla. Trump has opposed government measures to increase electrification, while Tesla continues to receive billions of dollars a year in regulatory credits.
Trump highlighted their split on Monday, telling Musk that he has an “amazing” product, but “that doesn’t mean everybody has to have an electric car.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
