Elon Musk claims live X chat with Trump was hit by DDoS attack, but no one believes him
The man who regrets buying Twitter and the man who physically can’t regret it at all were supposed to go head-to-head in an “audio event” on X last night, but they were initially met with a series of technical issues.
Elon Musk, who is pathologically incapable of shame, blamed an alleged DDOS (distributed denial of service) for his inability to start his “interview” with former US President Donald Trump on time.
Eighteen minutes after the scheduled start time, Musk decided to blame someone other than himself, although the claims of a DDOS attack were immediately undermined by the fact that all other parts of Twitter were functioning properly and, according to The Edge, The event was interrupted by Trump’s audio feed, which played “lo-fi techno” for thirty minutes.
Tweets? Do you mean something like Twitter?
Musk claims “The System” was tested earlier that day with eight million concurrent listeners, which is fitting in a story about two people who are demonstrably above the concept of truth.
Musk’s latest attempt to assuage his buyers’ remorse by turning Twitter into some kind of dreaded Thunderdome for political events went much the same way as the last. In the halcyon days of May 2023, Twitter’s engineering chief Foad Dabiri resigned, a day after the then-presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch was plagued by technical issues.
While Musk claimed last night that the non-existent DDOS attack proved that “there’s a lot of resistance to people just hearing about what’s happening, [Trump] must say,’ he was less enamored of freedom of speech when journalist Don Lemon, who was piloting a new show for X, dared to ask him about the moderation of content on the platform and mildly criticise his approach of running it as a kind of village square, but after the abolition of the local council. Mr. Lemon is now suing Musk for alleged fraud and breach of contract.
He has less influence over Trump, who had largely moved to his own Trump Media property Truth Social (where the messages are called “truths” and the oxygen is free) after he banned from Twitter under old management in 2021.
Trump seems at peace with Trump Media crashing and burning, but with his return to X, only time will tell if he stays, or what the ultimate fate of Trump Media and Truth Social will be if he does.
