These photos show former President Donald Trump at a rally in Minden, Nevada, on October 8, 2022, and Elon Musk in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 12, 2021. AP Photo
Elon Musk’s highly anticipated interview with former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday faced significant technical issues, frustrating those who tried to join the live audio conversation on X’s Spaces platform.
The interview, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. EDT, encountered problems almost immediately. About 18 minutes in, Musk posted on X that the platform was undergoing a "massive" denial-of-service attack (DDOS), a federal crime in which a website is overwhelmed with data to force it offline. Musk’s claim suggested a deliberate attempt to sabotage the event, though the cause of the problems was not immediately clear.
According to the outage tracker Downdetector, there was a noticeable increase in reports of X being inaccessible before the interview started. However, it couldn't be confirmed if this was due to a malicious attack as Musk claimed. Despite the technical difficulties, the rest of X seemed to be functioning normally, and some users speculated whether the glitches were due to the Spaces event being overwhelmed by the large number of people attempting to listen in.
Musk had heavily promoted the interview earlier in the day, emphasizing that it would be more of a conversation than a formal interview. He mentioned that X had tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier, suggesting that the platform should have been prepared for high traffic.
The interview eventually started at 8:42 p.m., and by 9:40 p.m., around 1.3 million people were tuned in. During the conversation, Trump congratulated Musk on "breaking every record in the book tonight" with the sheer number of listeners trying to join.
Technical challenges have plagued X since Musk took over the company. He has made significant cuts to the workforce, including engineers responsible for maintaining the platform. These layoffs have contributed to ongoing issues with the platform's stability.
Interestingly, Trump had previously mocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for similar technical problems during the launch of his primary campaign on X in May 2023. At that time, Trump called the DeSantis launch a "disaster" on his Truth Social platform, predicting that DeSantis’ entire campaign would be a failure. The DeSantis event, like Trump’s, suffered from technical difficulties, with users being kicked off, dealing with microphone feedback, and hearing hold music during the delayed start.
After a disappointing finish in Iowa’s kickoff caucuses, DeSantis eventually dropped out of the race.
Meanwhile, Trump, who had been posting on his own social media platform, Truth Social, returned to X on Monday morning, marking his first post on the platform since being banned in 2021. His posts promoted the interview with Musk and featured campaign ads, signalling his continued engagement in the social media landscape.
