Donald Trump returns to X with Elon Musk interview
A DDOS attack delayed the interview between the former president and the tech mogul, but it saw 27 million people tune in
Former President Donald Trump, who is the Republican candidate for the 60th quadrennial presidential election, joined X owner Elon Musk for an interview. This also marks the return of Trump to the platform after being banned in 2021.
When Musk took over the reins of the platform in 2022, he reinstated Trump’s account. The former president, who was once prolific on Twitter, expressed his appreciation but said that he would continue to use his own alt-tech social media platform Truth Social.
However, on Monday, Trump took to X to put up a flurry of campaign-related posts.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024
The livestream event was promoted under the hashtag "#TrumpOnX.” However, high drama marked his return to the platform as X was subjected to Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a platform by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic. While the interview was set for 8 pm, those who logged in at the time were greeted with a “This Space is Not Available” message.
There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on ?. Working on shutting it down.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.
Close to 27 million users tuned in to the podcast where Trump and Musk began by speaking about his recent brush with the sniper and eventually segued into topics of climate change, the relevance of fossil fuels even in the age of EVs, mass deportation, job creation, restoration of the "American dream" and fair elections.
Trump’s return to X could also give a fillip to the platform beleaguered by advertiser exodus.
