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Elon Musk said Monday there appeared to be a “denial of service” attack on his website ahead of a highly touted interview with former President Donald Trump that left would-be audience members befuddled.
The CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, was trying to explain why a heavily promoted interview with Mr. Trump, the GOP nominee for president, wasn’t loading.
“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down,” he wrote on the site. “Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”
Mr. Musk said the interview would proceed with the few persons who were able to access the Twitter “space.”
“We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter,” he wrote.
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The interview between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump was supposed to be a notable return to X for Mr. Trump.
He used the platform to fuel his political rise and launched his own social media company when he was booted from Twitter in 2021.
The glitch is a black eye for X, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used for his GOP primary launch last year, only to face technical difficulties. At the time, Mr. Trump called the DeSantis launch a “disaster.”
Users who expected a major interview instead turned into a peanut gallery of sorts, remarking on the irony of the world’s foremost tech company being unable to host an interview.
Mr. Trump, who is concerned about optics, often complains of technical glitches at his events, such as poor lighting or malfunctioning microphones. He’s joked about refusing to pay vendors who don’t offer good services.
Mr. Musk tried to explain the situation on his platform, writing they “tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today.”
Yet Trump opponents were quick to twist the knife, with Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project saying: “I can’t believe Elon let Trump down like this.”
Mr. Trump had touted the conversation moments earlier, saying on his own social media platform, Truth Social: “Getting ready for ‘chat’ with Elon. BIG audience. ENJOY! DJT.”
The chat, however, was still not loading a half-hour after its expected start time.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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