Donald Trump's big return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter did not begin as planned.
Trump and Elon Musk, X’s owner, were slated to have what the tech titan termed a “live conversation” at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. "Should be highly entertaining!” Musk posted ahead of the event.
There were 878,000 users connected to the conversation more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, but no interview was being broadcast. Many users received a message reading, “Details not available."
Trump's team posted that the “interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in.”
The conversation was intended to serve as a way for the former president to reach potentially millions of voters directly. It was also an opportunity for X, a platform that relies heavily on politics, to redeem itself after some struggles.
Notably, in May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used the platform as a way to officially announce his presidential bid, a disastrous rollout marred by technical glitches, overloaded by the more than 400,000 people who tried to dial in.
While Trump’s team urged patience Monday, the Republican presidential candidate was far less forgiving when virtually the same thing happened during DeSantis’ big moment.
“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” Trump wrote.
Trump supporters were not feeling especially patient Monday.
“Not available????? I planned my whole day around this,” wrote conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
“Please let Elon know we can’t join,” billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted.
Ahead of his conversation with Trump, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “some system scaling tests” to handle what’s anticipated to be a high volume of participants.
Despite the rocky start, the expected public conversation between Trump and Musk underscored just how much the U.S. political landscape has changed less than four years after Trump was permanently banned by the social media platform’s former leadership for spreading disinformation that sparked the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and undermined the very foundation of the American democracy.
Such disinformation has thrived at X under Musk’s leadership.
Monday’s meeting also highlighted the evolving personal relationship between Trump and Musk, two of the world’s most powerful men, who have shifted from being bitter rivals to unlikely allies over the span of one election season.
And in a reminder that the world was watching, the chat prompted a preemptive note of caution from Europe.
Thierry Breton, a French business executive and commissioner for internal market of the European Union, warned Musk of possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his interview with Trump. In a letter posted on X, Breton urged Musk to “ensure X's compliance” with EU law, including the Digital Services Act, adopted in 2022 to address a number of issues including disinformation.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung urged the EU to “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election." He said the EU was "an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign.”
Musk, who has described himself as a Democrat until a few years ago, endorsed Trump's candidacy two days after the former president was wounded during an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally last month.
Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk turned increasingly toward the right in his posts and actions on the platform, also using X to try to sway political discourse around the world. He's gotten in a dustup with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he calls the “woke mind virus” and amplified false claims that Democrats are secretly flying in migrants to vote in U.S. elections.
Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump, who was kicked off the platform — then known as Twitter — two days after the Jan. 6 violence, with the company citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” By November 2022, Musk had bought the company, and Trump’s account was reinstated, although the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, insisting that he was happier on his own Truth Social site, which he launched during the ban.
Hours ahead of his interview with Musk, Trump posted a two-and-a-half minute video to his X account, featuring video from his time in office, as well as audio of him saying one of his standard campaign lines referencing the legal cases that have mounted against him: “They're not coming after me, they're coming after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way, and I will never be moving."
But Trump's audience on X is legions larger than on Truth Social, which became a publicly traded company earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his mostly dormant X account is followed by 88 million. Musk's account, which will host the interview, has more than 193 million followers.
Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to a message as to whether he would cross-post his interview with Musk via his own accounts, including on X.
The former president has most recently posted on X only once, with a photo of his mug shot after he surrendered at an Atlanta jail a year ago on charges he conspired to overturn his election loss in the state.
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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina.