Lengthy glitch disrupts Elon Musk's "conversation" with Trump
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Former President Trump speaks during a press conference at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8, in Palm Beach, Fla. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Former President Trump turned his "conversation" with Elon Musk on Monday night into an extension of a campaign speech, often bulldozing the tech founder's attempts to join the dialogue.
Why it matters: The conversation started on a tough note for Musk with a 40+ minute delay, then featured lots of Trump criticism of President Biden despite his advisers' attempts to get him to focus his attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.
- Trump quipped that "illegal immigration saved his life" at the beginning of the interview, as he recounted in detail the assassination attempt last month.
- Trump had turned to show the crowd at his Pennsylvania rally an immigration chart moments before a gunman opened fire.
- He said that the shooting, which killed one rally-goer, made him "more of a believer" in God.
Zoom in: During the interview, Trump railed against illegal immigration and Harris' handling of the border, and President Biden over the economy and blaming him for the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
- Trump praised Musk, who has endorsed him in the presidential race, for creating a space to discuss his views "at length."
- Trump's interview with Musk comes as the ex-president's advisers have urged him to introduce a new "hard-hitting" stump speech to re-define Harris, Axios' Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report.
State of play: The interview started more than 40 minutes late after the platform's live streaming service was plagued by tech issues.
- Musk blamed the delay on "a massive DDOS attack," which is short for a "distributed denial of service" attack.
- It describes an attempt to shut a website or service down by flooding it with requests, typically generated by programs that essentially masquerade as a crowd of users trying to view the same content.
- Approximately a million listeners were listening to the "Space" when the interview began.
Our thought bubble: DDOS attacks are a real thing, and X might have been targeted, per Axios' Scott Rosenberg.
- But it's not always easy for the operators of sites to tell the difference between a DDOS attack and a flood of real users all trying to access content at once.
Zoom out: Trump posted multiple times earlier on Monday on X, after his account was inactive for nearly a year.
- Trump was suspended from X and some other social media platforms in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but Musk reinstated the former president's account when he took over the platform.
Go deeper: Trump revives X account activity before Musk interview
