--- title: "Elon Musk Makes Up Cyber Attack After Donald Trump Interview Crashes and Burns" description: "Elon Musk's chaotic chat with former president Donald Trump was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical difficulties." date: "2024-08-13" modified: "2024-08-13" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-cyber-attack-donald-trump-interview-crashes" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "donald trump" - "elon musk" - "the digest" - "twitter" --- # Elon Musk Makes Up Cyber Attack After Donald Trump Interview Crashes and Burns ![Elon Musk's chaotic chat with former president Donald Trump was delayed by more than 40 minutes due to technical difficulties.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Denial of Reality Elon Musk's "[interview]()" with Donald Trump on X went about as well as expected. The chat was [delayed by more than 40 minutes]() due to technical difficulties, a characteristic stumble of a company that [seemingly fired most of the engineers]() competent enough to run a high-traffic one-on-one. Of course, Musk immediately started grabbing at straws, [coming up with a ludicrous excuse]() for the blunder: a "massive" distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. He characteristically stopped far short of providing any evidence of such a cyber attack, leading to plenty of incredulity on the platform. "This is what happens when you dismantle the infrastructure and then try to host a high profile, highly advertised event," one user [tweeted](). ## The Dog Ate My Interview Other users grabbed the opportunity to mock the mercurial CEO. "Telling everyone at work I just suffered a DDoS attack whenever I can’t figure out how to get into a Zoom meeting," one X user [wrote](). "Haven't done the dishes tonight due to a massive DDoS attack," another user [tweeted](). "Is the DDoS attack in the room with us right now?" a separate account [wrote](). It's far from the first time a high-profile interview was botched by Musk's crumbling social media network. Last year, presidential nominee and Florida governor DeSantis attempted to launch his election bid with Musk's help on Twitter Spaces. The event was similarly [marred by technical difficulties](), resulting in a 25-minute delay. Ironically, Trump took a swipe at Musk and the platform at the time, calling it a "DISASTER!" in a post on Truth Social. "His whole campaign will be a disaster," he added. Vice president Kamala Harris also took aim at Musk and Trump's disastrous interview. "Trump's entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself," a [statement]() posted on X reads, "self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024." **More on Elon Musk:** *[Elon Musk's Daughter Just Torched Walter Isaacson, His (and Steve Jobs's) Biographer]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()