Elon Musk says Trump X Space delayed due to ‘massive’ cyber attacks

X owner Elon Musk said a “massive” cyber attack delayed his Spaces interview with former President Donald Trump on Monday night — while others noted the outage was eerily reminiscent of Florida’s government. Ron DeSantis’ troubled presidential campaign began on the platform a year ago.

“It seems there is a massive DDOS [Distributed Denial of Service] attack on 𝕏. Working on closing it,” Musk tweeted 18 minutes after the scheduled start time of the interview.

“Worst case, we’ll continue with a smaller number of live listeners and post the chat later,” he said, claiming to have tested Space earlier Monday with “8 million simultaneous listeners.”

There seems to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working to close it.

At worst, we’ll continue with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

X representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but company insiders told The Verge that no such cyberattack likely occurred.

One insider went so far as to say there was a “99% chance” Musk was lying about it.

The conversation began shortly after 8:40 p.m., with the owner of X saying: “As this mass attack illustrates, there is a lot of opposition to people just listening to what President Trump has to say.”

More than 1 million listeners eventually tuned in.

Netizens still speculated that the false start of the more than two-hour long interview was more the result of technical issues.

The breach left an opening to attack the Harris-Walz campaign.

“The extremism and dangerous agenda of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 is a feature not a defect of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen tonight during everything that was on X.com,” the spokesperson said. Joseph Costello in a statement.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in the service of people like Elon Musk and himself — the self-obsessed rich who will sell out the middle class and who can’t broadcast live in 2024,” Costello added. .

The Democratic campaign also took to Trump’s Social Truth platform to repost the former president’s scathing remarks about a similar conversation that took place between Musk and DeSantis on May 24, 2023.

“Wow! DeSanctus TWITTER LAUNCH IS A DISASTER! His entire campaign will be a disaster. LOOK!” The 45th president boasted in a message that same day.

That interview conducted by Musk crashed after just 20 minutes with more than 400,000 listeners.

The Florida governor had planned to use the new platform to announce his presidential bid, along with staunch supporters such as venture capital investor David Sacks.

Both Musk and Sacks, who initially backed DeSantis in the 2024 GOP primary, have since endorsed Trump, 78, for the presidency.

The Tesla CEO declined to donate to any candidate during the Republican primary — but pledged to donate tens of millions to a tech industry-linked super PAC working to help re-elect Trump.

Earlier on Monday, a senior European Union official had warned Musk of a possible contribution to the “amplification of harmful content” by airing the lengthy interview with Trump.

The official, Thierry Breton, posted a letter to X that Musk had sent him, warning him not to comply with EU law.

The Trump campaign responded in a statement that the European official and others should “mind their own business instead of trying to interfere in the US presidential election.”

“Let’s be very clear: The European Union is an enemy of free speech and has no authority whatsoever to dictate how we campaign,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

The FBI also announced an investigation Monday into the alleged hacking of documents belonging to the Trump campaign after receiving anonymous emails that included internal documents related to the vetting of now-vice presidential candidate JD Vance.