Musk's Trump interview on X hit by technical issues

Elon Musk's  scheduled interview with Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom he supports, was severely delayed on his platform X, after the social media platform ran into technical difficulties.

 

Musk said X, formerly Twitter, was the recipient of a "massive DDOS attack." Many X users were unable to access the live stream for the interview.

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

He later added: "We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter."

But the conversation was eventually accessible when the glitches appeared to clear.

Many users listening in said Trump occasionally sounded as if he was speaking with a lisp, with some saying it made him sound like a cartoon. Audio compression issues may have been the culprits, some suggested.

What do we know about the disruption?

Some 878,000 users were connected to the conversation over 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, with no interview being broadcast. Many users received a message reading: "Details not available."

Trump's team posted that the "interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in."

"We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today," Musk said.

When it did eventually go live, just over a million were able to tune in, though Donald Trump at one point congratulated Musk on attracting more than 60 million people to the Space, which was met with a lengthy silence from the X owner.

Musk aims to boost Trump's campaign

Though he says he had previously voted Democrat, Musk has thrown his weight, and his money, behind Trump since the latter's assassination attempt last month. 

Trump had been banned from Twitter since his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021. But following his takeover of the platform and renaming it X, Musk reinstated the former president in November 2022.

When the interview eventually started, Musk began by asking Trump to describe his assassination attempt. The Republican candidate and former president said he intended to go back in October to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was shot while addressing a rally.