Technical difficulties derail start of Musk interview with Trump
CNN
By Kate Sullivan, Clare Duffy and Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) — X owner Elon Musk claimed Monday that a distributed denial-of-service attack had overwhelmed the company’s servers, preventing him from beginning his interview with former President Donald Trump as thousands of people trying to join the conversation complained they were unable to listen.
“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down,” Musk said in a post on X. “Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”
It was not immediately clear if bad actors were behind what Musk called an “attack,” or whether the issue was simply caused by too many users trying to listen to the conversation.
“DDOS,” or distributed denial of service, is a common attack method in which hackers flood a site with phony traffic to overwhelm its systems and attempt to knock it offline.
Musk said in a separate post that X “tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today.”
The audio-only interview’s troubled start was reminiscent of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ launch of his failed run for the Republican presidential nomination last year. DeSantis attempted to kick off his campaign with a Twitter Spaces event with Musk, but the event was delayed by 25 minutes and marred by technical difficulties that resulted in a much smaller audience than the 500,000 who had initially attempted to join and listen.
Trump at the time mocked DeSantis’ botched launch, saying on his Truth Social website that it was “a DISASTER!”
“His whole campaign will be a disaster,” Trump said at the time.
Trump’s Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, which has a Truth Social account, shared that Trump comment about DeSantis as the former president’s own event with Musk was delayed Monday night.
Trump and Musk began their discussion — more than 40 minutes late — with the former president retelling how he had survived the assassination attempt at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13. Trump discussed how the shooter had been spotted by local police and rally attendees, and he praised the Secret Service for their reaction to the shooting.
Trump had posted earlier Monday on X – formerly known as Twitter – for the first time in nearly a year ahead of his conversation on the platform later in the day with X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Among Trump’s X posts was a video featuring past comments made by Democratic rival Kamala Harris in support of progressive policies – something the former president has highlighted at his recent campaign rallies.
The comments include Harris saying that she didn’t want to “treat people who are undocumented, who cross the border, as criminals,” that “we need to probably think about starting from scratch” when asked whether she supported abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that she thought it was “wrong and backward to think that more police officers will create more safety,” as well as remarks in support of progressive policy proposals such as “Medicare for All” and the Green New Deal.
The video closes with the on-screen words: “Reject San Francisco Radical Kamala Harris.”
Trump also posted a two-and-a-half-minute video that features news coverage of the federal search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 and his indictments by the Justice Department. Trump regularly asserts on the campaign trail that he is a victim of what he calls “political persecution,” and the video appears to amplify that claim.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it. The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead,” Trump says in the voiceover.
The video also includes lines that are staples of Trump’s campaign speeches, including: “They want to take away my freedom, because I will never let them take away your freedom. They want to silence me, because I will never let them silence you. They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way.”
Trump also reposted a message from his campaign’s official X account promoting his Monday night interview on the platform with Musk.
“It will be the interview of the century!” the all-caps post reads.
The last time Trump was active on X was to post a photo of his mugshot from August 24, 2023, after he was processed at an Atlanta jail in the Georgia election subversion case. In the meantime, his social media site of preference has been his own Truth Social platform.
Trump on Monday also posted a video that shows him walking down a hallway over audio of remarks that have been a part of his campaign stump speeches: “This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
And in another post, Trump asked, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”
“Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!” he wrote.
This story has been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
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