Elon Musk (left) and Donald Trump (right).
David Swanson | Vincent Alban | Reuters
Elon Musk’s rant against former President Donald Trump on social media platform
Social media users trying to log into the event reported that they were unable to join X’s live streaming platform.
Shortly after 8:20 p.m., billionaire Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Musk blamed the screen freeze on a cyber attack. CNBC could not immediately independently verify whether an attack occurred, but other parts of the X continued to work during the outage.
Musk said the company had tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier Monday to prevent any technical errors and ensure the X’s live streaming capabilities could handle the event.
As the party progressed, the platform was working to resolve technical issues, and Musk said the interview would take place at 8:30 ET, regardless of which user was able to successfully join the live broadcast. He added that “unedited information” would be released immediately thereafter.
After nearly an hour of troubleshooting, the conversation finally began around 8:45 PM ET.
“This massive attack shows that there’s a lot of pushback to hearing what President Trump has to say, but I’m honored to be having this conversation,” Musk said.
In response to CNBC’s request for comment on the technical delay, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung referred to Musk’s X post.
However, once the conversation began, Zhang appeared to congratulate Musk and Trump for attracting so many people to Musk’s platform, leading to the incident.
“Break the Internet!” Zhang said on X, along with a photo of Trump speaking into a phone through speakerphone.
The glitch was reminiscent of the 2023 technology disaster that derailed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch announcement.
The interview was billed as a buzzy press event designed to help the Trump campaign regain the confidence of supporters. Harris has experienced three tense weeks since.
“I want to stress that this is a conversation and its real purpose is just to get a feel for what Donald Trump is like in the conversation,” Musk said at the outset.
Trump then spent about 20 minutes describing an assassination attempt he suffered in July in Butler, Pennsylvania, that killed a rally spectator.
Trump later told several of the same stories he likes to tell in public, involving Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his views on NATO. He also made many of the same unfounded and debunked claims about immigration and crime that he typically makes on the campaign trail
This is a development story. Please check back for updates.
