A highly anticipated conversation between former President Trump and Tesla founder Elon Musk about X, scheduled for Monday, was delayed by technical issues, which Musk claimed were the result of an apparent cyberattack.
Musk, who owns X and is a supporter of Trump in the 2024 presidential election, posted that there appeared to have been a “massive DDOS (denial of service) attack” targeting the platform.
“We’re working on shutting it down,” Musk said. Posts“In the worst case scenario, we will reduce the number of live listeners and post the conversations at a later time.”
Trump posted a link to the space where the conversation was taking place just before 8 p.m., but the event hadn’t started as of 8:30 p.m. More than 700,000 users had joined by that time.
The conversation finally began at 8:42 p.m., with Musk acknowledging the delay.
“As this massive attack shows, there’s a lot of opposition to just listening to President Trump,” Musk said.
Users posted about their struggles to join the space, sharing screenshots of messages like “Details Unavailable” and “This space is unavailable.” Some were able to join but could only hear filler music while waiting for Trump and Musk to start speaking.
The technical issues were reminiscent of when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) tried to use a space to announce his 2024 presidential candidacy, but was also plagued by technical issues and the call stuttered on and off for more than 20 minutes before Massa was able to end his first space and start a new one.
Harris campaign officials were quick to draw comparisons between Trump’s technical issues and DeSantis’s, given the Florida governor’s failed campaign.
“Checking out Trump and Elon’s interview. Some flashbacks from the real Ron DeSantis,” Harris spokesman Ammar Moosa posted on X.
