Elon Musk Hosts Friendly Chat With Donald Trump On X After Tech Delays

LISTEN: Musk offers to help Trump administration in X-talk

Elon Musk's highly anticipated chat with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the Billionaires X platform was marred by technical issues.

The chat, in which Mr Musk asked friendly questions on topics including immigration and inflation, started more than 40 minutes late, with many users struggling to access it.

The event was billed as an interview, but Trump made a series of unsubstantiated claims that went unchallenged.

Mr Musk reiterated his support for Trump, who faces a rising new Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the November election.

He blamed the problems on a cyber attack, but an expert told the BBC this was unlikely.

The conversation about X comes as Trump, the former president and Republican presidential nominee, tries to revive his re-election campaign.

Ms Harris' arrival after President Joe Biden stepped down has tightened the race for the White House.

Mr Musk, meanwhile, has become an increasingly influential voice in politics.

He recently got involved in a new political committee supporting Trump's campaign.

“America is at a crossroads and you are the path to prosperity and I think Kamala is the opposite,” Musk said in one exchange.

The two men discussed a wide range of issues, from the assassination attempt on Trump last month at a rally in Pennsylvania to his desire for the United States to build an “Iron Dome” missile defense system like Israel's, to immigration, a key plank of his campaign.

Trump has also considered closing the federal Department of Education and transferring that responsibility to states, as one of his first moves if he wins the election in November.

The relationship between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump has evolved over the years, and they have exchanged online barbs in the past.

But Monday's conversation between the two men was friendly and there was plenty of mutual praise.

Trump, who has been skeptical of electric vehicles and previously pledged to cut federal subsidies, praised automaker Tesla, which Mr. Musk also owns.

He recently said he had no choice but to support electric vehicles because of Mr Musk's endorsement and called Tesla's product “awesome” on Monday.

Many observers detected a difference in Trump's voice, which sounded like a lisp, but a Trump campaign spokesperson said it was no different from normal.

Donald Trump interviewed on the phone by Elon Musk

However, the conversation between Musk and Trump started off in an inauspicious way.

As many users struggled to access the live stream, Mr Musk blamed the issues on “a massive DDoS attack on X” in a post.

Distributed denial of service attacks (or DDoS attacks) are attempts to overload a website to make it difficult to use or inaccessible.

A DDoS attack sends a very large number of signals to an online target to disrupt it, Anthony Lim, director of the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace and International Studies in Singapore, told the BBC.

It is unlikely that this will affect a single service or feature of a website.

Mr Lim added that it is possible that a large number of people trying to listen to the radio may have temporarily crashed the service.

However, Andrew Hay, of IT firm Damovo, said the problems could have been caused by a cyber attack.

The shaky start was reminiscent of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' entry into the May 2023 White House race, which took place on X and saw the livestream malfunction.

Monday marked a return of sorts to X/Twitter for Trump, who was removed from the platform shortly after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Aside from a series of campaign ads on Trump’s account on Monday, he had posted only once — his mugshot and a link to his campaign website — a year ago after Mr. Musk reactivated his X account in 2022.

It is unclear whether Trump, who posts frequently on his Truth Social site, would continue to post more frequently on X.

Joo da Silva contributed to this report

More information on the US elections

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