The Musk-owned social media platform malfunctioned as thousands of X users attempted to join the live Space ahead of the discussion, which was scheduled for 8 p.m. ET.
Several X users responded, saying they were unable to join the discussion. Some people received a message that said, “This space is not available.”
About 20 minutes after the discussion was supposed to start, Musk acknowledged the technical difficulties, saying, “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X.”
“Working on shutting it down,” Musk wrote. “Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”
Representatives for X and Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Musk said the discussion would continue with the “smaller number of concurrent listeners” at 8:30 p.m. ET, and he would post the unedited audio immediately after.
Musk and Trump finally began their conversation at 8:41 p.m. ET. The number of listeners in the Space quickly climbed beyond 1 million.
The technical complications harkened back to Musk’s disastrous campaign interview with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year. DeSantis’ attempt to launch his 2024 presidential bid was delayed by almost 30 minutes after X — then Twitter — crashed while trying to handle nearly 500,000 listeners.
On Sunday, Musk live-streamed himself gaming twice in preparation for the discussion with Trump, drawing in 2.1 million views and 1.3 million views, respectively.
Musk advertised the conversation with Trump as an “unscripted” discussion “with no limits on subject matter.”
In previous elections, Musk made an effort to stay out of politics. But the Tesla CEO has taken an increasingly far-right turn in recent months, officially endorsing Trump for president in July.
Since he bought Twitter in October 2022 and turned it into X, Musk has upped his political posting, often sharing right-wing theories and crusading against what he calls “the woke mind virus.”
