The “conversation” of Elon Musk and the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, is about to begin. The interview, which was held at X Spaces and was scheduled to begin at 8:00 PM ET on Monday night, was immediately canceled and did not begin until 42 minutes later.
Those who managed to get into the room, including several Verge staffers, said it began with a lo-fi tech broadcast from Trump’s account for about 30 minutes.
18 minutes into the conversation, Musk said that X was the subject of a “massive DDOS attack” that caused the site to go on schedule.
The rest of X appears to be working normally, and a company source confirmed to The Verge that it was not a denial of service attack. Another X employee said there was a “99 percent” chance Elon was lying about the attack.
In a series of subsequent posts on X, Musk said the company tested the system with 8 million simultaneous listeners on Monday. At the time the interview began, X said 915,000 people were listening to Space, Trump interview.
Musk repeated the DDOS claim when the site started at 8:40pm EST. “This massive attack shows that there is a lot of resistance to those who just listen to President Trump,” he said.
The failed interview is reminiscent of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ announcement in 2023 in X that he will run for president, which also began with technical difficulties. At the time, Musk described the problems with serious players.
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