Update: You can follow along with Townhall's posts to X with memorable moments from the conversation between Trump and Musk, which did end up taking place. He's covered a wide range of topics, from various policies, to President Joe Biden, to how he was nearly assassinated on July 13.
TRUMP: "This was a coup!"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 13, 2024
ELON: "They just took him [Biden] out back behind the shed and basically shot him!" pic.twitter.com/1lj3zprX5r
Musk also addressed the attack during the conversation.
ELON: "We unfortunately had a massive DDOS against, our servers...there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say. " pic.twitter.com/d8MY9OmIy8
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 13, 2024
RealClearPolitics' Philip Wegmann also noted earlier that 950,000 people were waiting to hear Trump and Musk speak, which is about the size of Delaware.
That's about the same size as the population of Delaware.
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 13, 2024
Original: Former and potentially future President Donald Trump returned to X on Monday, and was going to be having a conversation with Elon Musk over the platform that same night. At least, that's what he had planned on doing.
Musk announced from his account that there appears to have been a distributed denial of service attack on the platform, and that they were "[w]orking on shutting it down." He noted in a subsequent post that they "tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today."
As for what's next, Musk noted one possibility is for them to "proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later." A third post indicated that's the path they went with.
There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. 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.
We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today https://t.co/ymqGBFEJX0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter https://t.co/oxF8PsNHnZ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Plenty of users had taken to the platform to share their failed experience with getting into such a space, which at various points had over 200,000 listeners trying to tune in. There have been several trends over X to do with the space as well as its failures and the DDOS attack. Both Musk and multiple accounts for Trump and his campaign had been advertising the conversation over X.
The redo began at 8:30, with one user, 0mega6 posting live updates about the conversation after he was able to get in.
I'm in!!!! pic.twitter.com/r0NTs16zvM
— 0mega6 (@noCinErik) August 13, 2024
The European Union had tried to rein Musk in with a letter sent out earlier on Monday, as Matt covered, though both the Trump campaign and Musk weren't having it.
To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible! https://t.co/jL0GDW5QUx pic.twitter.com/XhUxCSGFNP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024
The European Union should mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election.
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) August 12, 2024
Only in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' America can an un-Democratic foreign organization feel emboldened enough to tell this country what to do. They know that a… https://t.co/imnczrEkmh
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