On August 13, 2024, Republican presidential candidate Trump (Donald Trump) participated in an interview on social platform X with Musk on Monday, August 12. However, technical issues plagued the interview from the start, with many users having difficulty accessing the live platform. Musk suggested that this could be due to a cyber attack on the platform.
The interview was scheduled to begin at 8:00 pm Eastern Time. However, many users reported being unable to successfully join the live platform.
At 8:18, Musk attributed the problem to a cyber attack (
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). He mentioned that earlier today, the platform had conducted system tests with 8 million listeners, but X seemed to have suffered a “large-scale DDOS attack,” and the platform was working to overcome the obstacle.
At 8:27, Musk posted again (
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), stating that the interview would resume at 8:30 with the participation of a few listeners, followed by the immediate release of “unedited audio.”
Minutes before the event started, Musk posted that he would have a “conversation” with Trump rather than an interview, adding: “No one is entirely themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand their true thoughts.”
Trump’s campaign is facing new challenges, and this event provided him with a fresh opportunity to connect with the public.
According to recent polls, his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, has caught up to Trump and injected energy into the Democratic camp through a series of rallies. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week may further boost Harris’s campaign momentum.
On Monday morning, after a year-long hiatus, Trump returned to X and posted a video emphasizing that the four criminal indictments he is facing are politically motivated. He quickly followed up with six more posts, once again using this important platform for his voice.
Trump’s last X post was in August 2023 when he called for donations and shared a photo of himself in prison after being detained in Atlanta. This was related to accusations of his attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia in 2020.
Trump often posts on his “Truth Social” platform, but compared to X, his audience on that platform is much smaller. Being interviewed by Musk on his social platform allows Trump to reach a different audience.
Musk is an unconventional interviewer. The world’s richest man supported Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020 but started leaning more to the right after Trump’s attack in July of this year, showing support for the Republican party.