Nick Harper: US correspondent on the technological glitches that impacted Elon Musk's interview with Trump

Elon Musk's virtual interview with Donald Trump today was overshadowed by a technical glitch.

The X (formerly Twitter) owner teased the interview as unscripted and highly entertaining, with no subject limits.

But online traffic overloaded the platform with many struggling to access the live 'space'.

US correspondent Nick Harper says Musk blamed it on a cyber attack, after earlier system scaling tests handled eight million listeners.

"They even suggested through the course of the conversation at one point that potentially the Democrats were behind it - to stop Republican Donald Trump from making it onto the airwaves."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Donald's done the interview with Elon. Unfortunately x or
you know, Twitter crashed and thousands of users had to
listen to this for more than forty minutes. I going
to give you six seconds. Imagine forty minutes. Now, US
correspondent a feature story News Nick Harper listened to the

(00:20):
whole thing.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
He Nick hi Hana Nick.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Elon Musk says it was a cyber attack that caused
the technical glitch.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Do we know if that's true, Well, we don't to
this stage. I mean, that's what he's saying, that that's
what's being put out online. Undoubtedly people are going to
look into this to see if it was the case.
But he also said they'd done plenty of testing in
recent days to ensure that something like this didn't happen.
They even suggested during the course of the conversation at
one point that potentially the Democrats were behind it to

(00:46):
stop Republican Donald Trump from making it onto the airways.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
And did we actually get anything out of this interview
or was it just an opportunity for Donald Trump to
ramble through the usual stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I don't think it's more of the latter. That's so
many of his usual talking points were essentially ticked off.
It was like a stump speech. He was given free reign.
It was not a probing interview. It was very much
an opportunity for him to speak about what he wanted
to speak about, and therefore he went along very similar
lines to the type of things that we normally hear.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
So would you describe the relationship between Donald Trump and
Elon Muskers of Bromance?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, undoubtedly, which is kind of strange because there has
been this evolution in the last year or so. He
switched allegiance. He was a Democrat, he got disenchanted with Biden.
He was supporting Donald Trump's rival Ron Decantis to Florida
governor until he dropped out. But now he's fully backing
Trump and very interesting to see that evolutionary shift between
that movement that he's made.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Donald Trump has said that the invasion of Ukraine by
Putin wouldn't have happened if he was in charge, as
opposed to Joe Biden. I mean that seems like actually
he may have a fair argument there.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
What do you think, Oh, it's interesting because they were
very much talking about this idea of having a strong
man as a president. Elon Musk was pushing Donald Trump
on this, saying that it was important to have an
intimidating president. He picked up up and he said that
he had pushed back against world leaders, even suggesting as
well that the current Israel Hamas conflict would not have

(02:17):
taken place if he had been president so very much,
saying that Biden was too weak, hadn't stood up to
world leaders and as a result, conflicts had been created.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Nick, what do you think it's going to take for
Trump to be able to get a bit of a
buzz around his campaign because Kamla's obviously steeling all the
limelight at the moment.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, the big hope was that this would create buzz
that we would out the back of this have huge
headlines for Donald Trump that elon Musk for how well
it had gone for the news that he had made.
But really the headlines are dominated by the technical problems,
those glitches that everyone experienced at the start. I don't
think it's created that social media buzz that he was
hoping for, because bear in mind, the social media space

(02:57):
is an area where Kamala Harris is excelling. Her team
has done very well to captivate and build momentum with
social media users. She's got a big Gen X following
and Donald Trump. I guess was hoping to capitalize on this.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I see hey, thank you so much, like really appreciating
the carp of the US Correspondent, Features story news. For
more from Hither Duplessy, Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio