Elon Musk's scheduled interview with Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom he supports, was severely delayed on his platform X, after the social media site ran into technical difficulties.

Musk said X, formerly Twitter, was the recipient of a "massive DDOS attack." Many X users were unable to access the livestream for the interview and it was delayed for over 40 minutes.

"Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later."

He later added: "We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter."

But the conversation was eventually accessible when the glitches appeared to clear.

What do we know about the disruption?

Some 878,000 users were connected to the conversation over 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, with no interview 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."

"We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today," Musk said.

When it did eventually go live, just over a million were able to tune in, though Donald Trump at one point congratulated Musk on attracting more than 60 million people to the Space, which was met with a lengthy silence from the X owner.

Trump lashes out at Biden, dismisses climate change

The former US president's interview was largely one-sided, appearing to be merely a platform for Trump to share his rhetoric.

Trump vented about a "zombie apocalypse" of immigration, repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden as "stupid" and talked about developing a new missile defense system based on the one that defends Israel. He also dismissed climate change, arguing that sea-level rises would create more real estate opportunities.

"The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years," he told Musk.

"You'll have more ocean front property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power, and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden."

Musk aims to boost Trump's campaign

Though he says he had previously voted for Democrats, Musk has thrown his weight, and his money, behind Trump since the latter's assassination attempt last month. 

Trump had been banned from Twitter after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021. But following his takeover of the platform and renaming it X, Musk reinstated the former president in November 2022.

When the interview eventually started, Musk began by asking Trump to describe his assassination attempt. The Republican candidate and former president said he intended to go back in October to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was shot while addressing a rally.

rmt/jsi (AFP, AP, Reuters)