Musk’s live stream to energize Trump campaign has technical difficulties

Designed to contain the Democrats’ advance in the electoral polls for the presidential race in November, the conversation between the owner of the social network X (formerly Twitter) and the Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, held on Monday night (12), was marked by technical problems and attacks on the opposing candidate, Kamala Harris.

Musk had planned to host the Republican nominee for an interview “Live on X,” formerly known as Twitter Spaces, but the social network experienced outages and many users were unable to participate in the virtual event.

“There appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Working to take it down. Worst case scenario, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later,” the South African billionaire wrote on his personal account.

Elon Musk’s intention was to give the former president a chance to gain prominence at a time when his campaign is seen as in decline. His Democratic opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, has erased Trump’s lead in the polls and energized Democratic voters with a series of rallies in swing states.

Amid X’s struggles, Harris’ campaign took aim at Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social, by reposting critical comments the former president made after Ron DeSantis’s Republican primary campaign announcement was plagued by similar technical issues. Trump called both X and DeSantis “disastrous.”

With the live broadcast finally on air, after a 45-minute delay, Trump had the space he wanted to repeat his favorite campaign themes. Illegal immigrants were one of his favorite targets in the first part of the conversation. He repeated that not only Latin countries began sending criminals to the US, but also countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

“Elon, what’s happening is unbelievable. You have [imigrantes vindos] from Africa, from the Congo. They’re coming from the Congo and 22 of those people who came from the Congo recently are murderers,” Trump said.

He went on to claim that “they” – without specifying who exactly they might be – “take them out of jails, prisons and bring them to the United States. They deposit them in the United States and say, ‘Don’t ever come back, or you will be executed.’”

Together, Trump and Musk launched criticisms and questions about Kamala’s ability to govern and even her ability to sustain a dialogue like theirs.

“Kamala would never have this conversation. She’s not smart,” Trump said. “Biden wouldn’t have this conversation either.” Musk echoed as a fan: “With Biden and Kamala it wouldn’t be possible.”

Trump’s false rhetoric about climate change was also addressed in the conversation between the billionaires. “The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise an eighth of an inch in the next 400 years,” Trump said.

“The biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power, and we cannot allow anything to happen to stupid people like Biden,” he concluded.

Musk has laid out his pro-fossil fuel ideas, saying that the oil and gas industry cannot be vilified or the economy will collapse. And that since there is still plenty of demand in the US and around the world, sales of barrels remain an element that, he says, “helps America prosper.”

Musk’s position on the energy transition is surprising, given that in addition to the X, the South African also owns Tesla, an electric car manufacturer.

With the green light given by Musk, Trump repeated his motto of encouraging increased oil production in the US and his oil exploration project in Alaska – blocked by Biden.

Elon Musk has become a fierce critic of Democrat Joe Biden, frequently posting messages to his more than 194 million followers criticizing the current US president’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.

In recent weeks, the X network has become the center of fierce controversy for allowing the dissemination of false information and material seen as inciting violence amid street riots caused by far-right groups in the United Kingdom.

On Monday, hours before the conversation with Trump, the European Union warned Elon Musk about its legal obligation to prevent the possible dissemination of harmful content on its platform. In a letter to Musk, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, reminded him that the interview will be “accessible to EU users” and, therefore, “we monitor the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may involve violence, hatred and racism”.

The X network has become the center of fierce controversy in recent weeks for allowing the dissemination of false information and material seen as inciting violence amid street riots caused by far-right groups in the United Kingdom.