Trump-Musk Chat Gets 1 Billion Views Despite Kamala-Walz Campaign & Cyber Attacks

Former President Donald Trump sat down for a highly anticipated interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, but the event didn’t go off without a hitch.

The interview, originally slated to start at 8 PM ET, faced an unexpected delay due to a large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, pushing the start time back to about 8:45 PM ET.

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Musk took to social media to address the issue, stating, “There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”

There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on . Working on shutting it down.

Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

He also mentioned that earlier in the day, the platform had been tested with 8 million concurrent listeners without a hitch.

We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today https://t.co/ymqGBFEJX0

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

Given the prominence of this conversation, there was of course a 100% probability of DDOS attacks. We also had some unforced errors ourselves.

But good work by the X team fending off the attacks and fixing our mistakes!

All’s well that ends well.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

Catherine Herridge, an Emmy-winning national security investigative reporter, offered some insight into the situation, explaining on X that a DDOS attack is designed to overwhelm a server with traffic, rendering it unusable for legitimate users. While a forensic review might reveal the origin of the attack, it’s not always a guarantee.

Explainer…

DDOS is a distributed denial of service attack.

This is a cyber attack designed to cripple a network resource (server) by overwhelming it with traffic and making it unavailable for users.

Usually a temporary + malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic.

A… https://t.co/uM8NeaI1er

— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) August 13, 2024

Despite the attack, at least 21 million people still tuned in to the conversation.

21 million tuned in to Trump’s Space with Elon Musk, and 135 million views so far. This conversation is breaking records. pic.twitter.com/NcGHl8uo9g

— Clown World ™ (@ClownWorld_) August 13, 2024

Meanwhile, emails leaked from the campaign teams of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz revealed a frantic response to the event. One email, with the subject line “The two worst people you know are live this evening,” accused Musk of trying to control American democracy and slammed him for providing a platform to what they described as Trump’s “unhinged and hateful agenda.”

.⁦@KamalaHarris⁩ is so triggered right now. This is the headline of an email her campaign just sent out.

Democrats want all tech executives to be Democrats.

This is a foreshadowing of how Kamala would target & shut down conservative business owners like ⁦@elonmusk⁩. pic.twitter.com/mrZo7teM5I

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 13, 2024

The email also took aim at Musk’s financial support for Trump, claiming he’s using his vast resources to back Team MAGA. In a not-so-subtle plea for cash, the email urged supporters to donate $25 to help Harris and Walz combat what they labeled as “lies.”

President Trump has been speaking for over an hour to over a million people about his winning agenda for the American people.

Kamala is BIG MAD about this as she refuses to speak to the media, do an interview, or even explain what platform she is even running on.

So pathetic. pic.twitter.com/H9KO7bErs7

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 13, 2024

Despite all of this, Elon Musk has stated that the conversation has reached a combined 1 billion views.

Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion https://t.co/s8x8QmdmnY

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

You can check out the conversation in it’s entirety below.

https://t.co/PLHekD9jzW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024

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