Musk Hosts Trump on X After Tech Delays
The much-anticipated Elon Musk's discussion with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the billionaire’s platform X was affected by technical issues.
The conversation, which involved friendly questions on subjects such as immigration and inflation, began more than 40 minutes late because many struggled to join.
Musk repeated his endorsement of Trump, who faces a resurgent new Democratic candidate, Vice-President Kamala Harris, in November’s election.
Ms Harris entry into the presidential race, after President Joe Biden stepped aside, tightened the race for the White House.
"America is at a fork in the road and you are the path to prosperity and Kamala is the opposite," said Mr Musk in one exchange.
The two spoke on the assassination attempt on Trump last month at a Pennsylvania rally, his wanting the US to get an "Iron Dome" missile defence system like the one in Israel as well as immigration, a key plank of his campaign.
Trump also talked about closing the federal Department of Education and moving that responsibility to the states as one of his first acts if he wins the election in November.
Trump, who has been sceptical of electric vehicles and previously vowed to roll back federal subsidies, praised car-maker Tesla, which Mr Musk also owns.
He recently stated that he had "no choice" but to support EVs due to Mr. Musk's endorsement, and on Monday, he praised Tesla, calling it a "great" product. However, many noticed a difference in Trump's voice, suggesting he might have had a lisp. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign, however, insisted that his voice was unchanged.
The Musk-Trump conversation had a rocky start. Many users struggled to access the livestream, which Mr. Musk attributed to "a massive DDoS attack on X" in a post.
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks aim to overwhelm a website with traffic, making it difficult or impossible to access. Anthony Lim, Director of the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace and International Studies in Singapore, explained that DDoS attacks send a large volume of signals to disrupt an online target and that it’s unlikely such an attack would affect only a single service or feature on a website.
He added that the large number of people attempting to listen might have temporarily crashed the service. However, Andrew Hay from IT firm Damovo suggested the issues could have been caused by a cyber-attack.
The glitchy start was reminiscent of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' entry into the White House race in May 2023, which also saw technical issues during its X-hosted livestream.
