Musk’s Trump talk: After glitchy start, a two-hour ramble
MARGO MARTIN VIA X/VIA REUTERS
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump speaks as he participates in an interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on the social media platform X, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, in this picture obtained from social media.
Stay updated on Hawaii and national elections coverageSAN FRANCISCO >> At 8:35 p.m. Eastern time Monday, a live audio stream on the social platform X of a conversation between Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump flickered to life after a 35-minute delay — but only for a moment.
Trump’s mic came on, and a shuffling sound was heard. A second later, his mic cut out. Musk’s account, which had been logged in and ready, then momentarily disappeared from the conversation entirely.
Seven minutes later, the glitches appeared to be resolved and the discussion began. Musk, who has endorsed Trump’s presidential run, and Trump greeted each other as “Donald” and “Elon.” They then began a friendly chat about immigration, the economy and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The two men talked for over two hours with more than 1 million people listening in at the same time, according to X.
In case you missed the original recording.
Skip the beginning part. https://t.co/Ksm6UqdIq6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
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“I congratulate you,” Trump, who appeared to lisp at times, said to Musk about the livestream’s audience. “Do I get paid for this or what?”
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The conversation had been billed as a triumphant moment for the social platform, which Musk bought in 2022. He had been trying to woo Trump to become active again on a site he once wielded like a megaphone before being barred in 2021 and then, by Musk’s doing, reinstated. In the end, the event’s bumpy beginning and ensuing banter showcased both the weaknesses and strengths of X under Musk.
The hiccups getting the livestream going renewed questions about X’s ability to handle high-profile events. Without providing evidence, Musk blamed the snafu on a “massive” distributed denial-of-service attack, a type of cyberattack that uses floods of malicious web traffic to overwhelm sites and knock them offline.
Yet the event also illustrated how Musk can propel X into the spotlight and draw large audiences by building relationships with major public figures, using the site to further his own political interests.
“With this ‘interview,’ Musk has shown how he plans to use his platform to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies online speech. “He is maximizing the political value that X gives him. In turn, trust in X will be polarized.”
After the chat concluded, Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO, said Trump’s campaign appearance on X was a win for the platform, calling it “wide ranging, unscripted and wildly refreshing.” Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s campaign brushed off X’s technical glitches, suggesting that the problems were the work of Chinese adversaries and calling the former president “a fighter.”
For days, Musk had built up anticipation for Trump’s appearance on X. “Entertainment guaranteed!” Musk posted Sunday night to his more than 193 million followers.
On Monday, Trump, who has been mostly off X for several years, posted 10 times on the platform, sharing campaign videos and promoting his conversation with Musk. Musk quickly drew attention back to Trump’s posts, sharing a meme that showed a woman whispering into a man’s ear that “Donald Trump is back on X,” followed by an image of goose bumps rising on skin.
But their discussion, which was scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time, almost didn’t get off the ground. Many X users who tried to tune in struggled to load the livestream on their phones and computers.
“We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today,” Musk posted apologetically at 8:24 p.m. He then blamed a cyberattack for the issues and later agreed with an X user’s post that the outage was caused by “Dems fighting to ‘save’ Democracy from two massive disrupters.”
X has run into questions about the reliability of its service after Musk bought the site and eliminated more than 75% of the company’s employees. While X has largely avoided widespread outages, Spaces, the live audio feature on which Trump appeared, has at times been troublesome.
In May 2023, Musk hosted a live audio conversation on X with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was announcing his presidential run. The event was marred by technical problems and crashed.
To avoid a repeat performance on Monday, Musk had spent Sunday evening testing X’s service by streaming himself playing a video game.
Over the weekend, X had also implemented a “code freeze,” which blocks employees from making major changes to the platform’s underlying code without executive permission, according to an X employee who was not authorized to speak publicly. Freezes are standard practice before major events because they prevent last-minute tweaks that could interrupt the service.
Yet those moves did not stop X from sputtering. Inside the company Monday, employees flooded an internal chat room with complaints that they could not access the Trump-Musk Space.
“Team is aware of issues with Spaces and are working on it,” one X employee wrote a few minutes after Musk’s conversation with Trump missed its scheduled start time, according to internal messages seen by The New York Times. Some workers gathered in an online forum called “#spaces-war-room” to diagnose the problems with the service.
Once the discussion finally got underway, Trump seemed to warm up to the livestreaming format. “It’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length,” he said. He later congratulated Musk as the stream topped more than 1.3 million concurrent listeners, according to a counter on X.
The Trump campaign also ran ads on X on Monday, including one on the top of X’s trending topics page, to promote Trump’s conversation with Musk. Such ads can cost as much as $500,000 for 24 hours.
Musk used the chat to showcase his own political views, including on climate, foreign policy and federal spending. He nudged Trump to soften his rhetoric on immigrants but also agreed with Trump’s assessment that immigration at the southern border contributed to crime, though academic studies have not supported the idea.
“If we have another four more years of open borders — and it’s going to be even worse than the last 3 1/2 years — I’m not sure we’ve got a country,” Musk said.
Trump participated in the conversation from a wood-paneled room at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a photo posted by one of his staffers. On Tuesday, Musk posted on X that he had been at a “friend’s ranch in Wyoming.”
After Trump and Musk had talked about Venezuela, Harris and other topics, Musk closed their meandering conversation on X by musing about his own political journey.
“I haven’t really been active in politics before,” Musk said, adding that he had supported Democratic candidates in the past. “I think you should support Donald Trump for president,” he told listeners.
Trump did not post on X afterward. Instead, he shared endorsements of 13 Republican Congressional candidates on his own social media service, Truth Social.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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