Ted Johnson
At 8 p.m. ET, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social, “Getting ready for “chat” with Elon. BIG audience. ENJOY! DJT”
But the much promoted conversation between Trump and X owner Elon Musk was beset with a massive technical problem for about 40 minutes, as users were unable to access to Spaces chat. Listeners instead got the message “unavailable.”
Musk wrote, “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.” The rest of X, though, appeared to be working. Musk said that they had tested the system to handle 8 million concurrent listeners earlier in the day.
When the chat finally got started, Trump recounted the details of the assassination attempt on his life, before he and Musk shifted to some of the campaign’s signature issues, including immigration.
The glitch was reminiscent of the technical snafus that beset the launch of Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign last year, which the Florida governor announced on X Spaces. Harris’ campaign even posted one of Trump’s comments from then mocking DeSantis for the glitches.
Musk has endorsed Trump, and the event was not an interview but an extended conversation. Trump had free rein to go on extended riffs on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with Musk either in agreement or, at times, trying to outline how the former president’s positions were more moderate than extreme.