Elon Musk's much-hyped interview of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform X was nearly derailed early on by technical glitches in the first minutes of the scheduled start time on Monday evening.
Users trying to log on to the event, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET, reported that they could not join X's livestream platform.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO blamed a cyberattack for freezing the X platform. CNBC was not immediately able to independently verify whether or not an attack took place, but other parts of X continued working throughout the glitches.
After nearly an hour of troubleshooting, the conversation finally began in earnest and went for more than two hours. At various points, as many as 1.3 million people appeared to be watching the interview, according to the X Spaces tally.
"This massive attack illustrates there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say," Musk said.
In response to CNBC's request for comment on the delay, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung pointed to Musk's X post.
Yet after the conversation got underway, Cheung appeared to congratulate Musk and Trump for actually causing the crash themselves by drawing so many people to Musk's platform.
"BREAKING THE INTERNET!" he said on X, accompanied by a photo of Trump talking into a phone on speaker.
Monday's glitches were reminiscent of X's technical disaster in 2023, which botched Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign launch announcement.
This time, the event was billed as a conversation between two of the world's most influential people; something buzzy and potentially news-making that might help revive Trump's campaign.
The three weeks since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee, have rattled Trump and his presidential campaign.
Trump's advisors have urged the president to adopt a more disciplined, traditional campaign script at public events: Set Biden aside, attack Harris on policy and try to stay on message.
But Trump has rarely chosen this route, and Monday was no exception.
PossibleFunction0 on August 13rd, 2024 at 00:30 UTC »
So the website at large is still up yet this is a DDOS attack?
fadufadu on August 13rd, 2024 at 00:29 UTC »
Elon Musk’s much-hyped interview of Donald Trump on the social media platform X was quickly derailed by technical glitches.
Musk blamed a cyberattack, saying “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.”
For many, it was a reminder of the technical disaster on X in May 2023 that botched Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign announcement.
BrutalHunny on August 13rd, 2024 at 00:28 UTC »
Might as well blame the cyber truck.