CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk’s highly anticipated conversation with Republican presidential Donald Trump on his platform, X, encountered significant technical difficulties.
The discussion, where Musk posed amicable questions on topics like immigration and inflation, started more than 40 minutes late due to widespread user access issues.
Although the event was advertised as an interview, Trump made several unverified claims that went unchallenged.
Musk reiterated his support for Trump, who is up against a resurgent Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the upcoming November election.
Musk attributed the technical problems to a cyber-attack, but an expert told the BBC this was unlikely.
This conversation on X comes as Trump attempts to revitalise his re-election campaign.
With Vice President Harris entering the race following President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside, the contest for the White House has grown more competitive.
Musk has been increasingly influential in the political arena lately.
Recently, he became involved in a new political committee backing Trump’s campaign.
“America is at a fork in the road and you are the path to prosperity and Kamala is the opposite,” Musk remarked during one of the exchanges.
They discussed various issues, including last month’s assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, his proposal for the U.S. to adopt an “Iron Dome” missile defence system like Israel’s, and immigration, a central theme of his campaign.
Trump also speculated about possibly eliminating the federal Department of Education and delegating that responsibility to the states as a priority if he wins in November.
The dynamic between Musk and Trump has evolved over the years, with both having exchanged sharp words online in the past.
However, Monday’s conversation was friendly, with mutual compliments being exchanged.
Trump, who has previously been critical of electric vehicles and promised to eliminate federal subsidies for them, praised Tesla, the car company owned by Musk.
He recently admitted that Musk’s endorsement had compelled him to support EVs, calling Tesla products “great” during the discussion.
Many viewers noticed a change in Trump’s voice, suggesting he might have a lisp, but a Trump campaign spokesperson said his voice was unchanged.
Nevertheless, the Musk-Trump talk had a rocky start.
As users struggled to join the livestream, Musk posted that a “massive DDoS attack on X” was responsible for the issues.
DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service attacks, aim to overwhelm a website with traffic, making it difficult or impossible to use.
Anthony Lim, Director of the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace and International Studies in Singapore, explained to the BBC that such an attack typically affects multiple parts of a website, not just a single service or feature.
Lim suggested that a sudden surge in users could have temporarily crashed the service.
However, Andrew Hay from IT firm Damovo noted that a cyber-attack could have caused the disruptions.
The glitchy start echoed the launch of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ White House campaign in May 2023, which also experienced technical failures on X.
Monday marked a partial return to X/Twitter for Trump, who had been banned from the platform following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Besides a series of campaign ads posted on Monday, Trump had only posted once since Musk restored his X account in 2022a mug shot and a link to his campaign site a year ago.
It’s uncertain whether Trump, who is active on his Truth Social platform, will begin posting more regularly on X.
NANCY MBAMALU
Follow us on:
