Elon Musk’s livestream interview with Trump Crashes X Spaces

Several X users responded, saying they were unable to join the discussion. Some people got a message saying “This space is not available”.

About 20 minutes after the talk was supposed to begin, Musk acknowledged the technical difficulties, saying, “It looks like there’s a massive DDOS attack on X.”

“We’re working on closing it,” Musk wrote. “At worst, we’ll continue 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 talk will continue with the “smaller number of concurrent listeners” at 8:30 p.m. ET and will post unedited audio soon after.

Musk and Trump finally began their conversation at 8:41 PM ET. The number of listeners in the Space quickly climbed above 1 million.

The technical complications harked 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 nearly 30 minutes after X — then Twitter — crashed while trying to handle nearly 500,000 listeners.

On Sunday, Musk live-streamed himself playing twice in preparation for the talk with Trump, garnering 2.1 million views and 1.3 million views, respectively.

Musk touted 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 buying Twitter in October 2022 and turning it into X, Musk has increased his political posts, often sharing right-wing theories and crusading against what he calls the “virus of the woke mind.”