Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump largely stuck to familiar campaign themes in a live X interview with social media platform billionaire owner Elon Musk. The interview initially struggled with technical issues.
The site reported that the page was “unavailable” for some users shortly after the scheduled start time of 10am AEST, despite more than 1.3 million people successfully logging in after a 40-minute delay.
Musk, who has recently become an influential supporter of the Republican US presidential candidate, the technical problems were caused by a DDOS attack. He said he had tested the system earlier in the day with eight million concurrent listeners.
DDOS stands for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). This occurs when a website is flooded with traffic in an attempt to overload the servers hosting the website and make it inaccessible.
What was said in the interview between Musk and Trump?
When the conversation finally began, Musk said the “huge attack shows there’s a lot of resistance to people just listening to what President Trump has to say.”
In the US, it is common to sometimes refer to former presidents by their previous titles.
Musk then asked Trump for his story and Trump complied with his request, despite the fact that he in July that he would only speak about it once.
Trump called his survival a “miracle” and said his campaign would return to the city where the October rally took place.
Musk publicly spoke out in support of Trump just minutes after the assassination attempt.
The two then discussed the immigration issue, with Trump criticizing the performance of Democratic presidential candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he called America’s “border czar” and “person in charge” of the border.
but was tasked with addressing the ‘root causes’ of migration from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Trump said that if re-elected, he would deport a million illegal immigrants from the US.
Musk repeatedly said that immigrants from all over the world, not just South American countries, were coming to America through the southern border.
At the end of the call, Musk said he had “not been this political before” and that it was “absurd” that some were portraying him as “far right.” He described himself as “historically a moderate Democrat.”
But he said he believed a second Trump presidency promised “an exciting future.”
“I think we’re in big trouble with a Kamala administration,” Musk said.
“I think it is essential that you win, for the good of the country.”
How Elon Musk Became a Donald Trump Supporter
Trump and Musk didn’t always see eye to eye.
Musk once criticized Trump for ignoring the challenge of climate change.
In June 2017, five months into Trump’s presidency, because the government withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, a key international treaty from 2016 aimed at tackling climate change.
“Climate change is real,” Musk wrote at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
After Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020, Musk told Fortune magazine he was “super excited” about President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda and optimistic “about the future of sustainable energy.”
But the tech billionaire – the founder and CEO of electric car brand Tesla – turned against Biden.
The US president has long had an openly pro-union stance, while Musk has expressed anti-union views on several occasions. Biden also did not invite the Tesla owner to an electric vehicle summit in 2021.
Trump has long been a critic of electric vehicles, but after Musk’s support, he changed his mind.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon has been very supportive of me. So I have no choice,” Trump said at a rally in early August.
Trump’s Troubled Twitter Timeline
Trump used X, formerly known as Twitter, during his political rise and presidency, but was banned after a mob of his supporters .
Musk reinstated Trump’s account after buying the platform in 2022, but the ex-president has only returned to his post once, preferring to share his unfettered thoughts on his own platform, Truth Social.
Since Musk bought Twitter and changed its name to X, he has increasingly focused on priorities he shares with far-right Republicans, venting anger over perceived censorship of conservatives and spreading inflammatory and false news stories about immigration.
Trump has 88.2 million followers on Facebook, while Musk has 193.9 million.
Tuesday’s interview wasn’t the first time a major X event has faced technical issues.
In May 2023, Musk hosted the campaign launch of Trump’s Republican rival, Ron DeSantis, on X, but the website crashed during the interview.
The and ridiculed by the Trump campaign.
Ahead of the interview with Trump, Musk said he would be testing X’s system and posted two videos of himself gaming.
Some X users reported seeing ads supporting Trump.
X and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for information about whether a pro-Trump ad had been purchased.