The Squiz 

Billionaire Elon Musk ran his much-anticipated interview with former/hopeful Republican President Donald Trump on the social media platform X yesterday. The former US leader hadn’t posted on X (which used to be one of his favourite things to do…) for about 12 months after being banned by the platform’s previous owners. The entrepreneur said the chat was to give “open-minded independent voters” a glimpse into Trump’s campaign, although some said it didn’t offer up much new info. But the lead story out of it is that it didn’t go off without a technical hitch… 

Oh… What happened? 

The interview’s live stream was delayed by 40 minutes after what Musk called “a massive DDOS attack” – that’s a ‘designated denial of service’ by hackers trying to block the public’s access. The hold music timed out, leaving some muffled background noise, but the tech troubles were eventually sorted and about 1 million users tuned in. As for the substance of the conversation… They talked about electric cars (something they’ve previously butted heads over), the assassination attempt against Trump, and Musk’s recent warning from the European Commission. Musk finished up with an endorsement – he says voting for Trump is “the right path” for the nation. Surprise, surprise – Democrats disagree… A Harris campaign spokesperson called the pair “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell-out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024”.

Anything else?

Yep – it was a big day for Trump… Before the interview kicked off, the FBI confirmed it’s opened an investigation into claims from his campaign team that they were hacked by Iran and had documents stolen. It’s also looking into whether the former Biden-Harris campaign was also targeted. Iranian officials have denied having anything to do with it, and the Biden administration hasn’t accused their long-time adversary of anything yet. That might be because Team Biden has been busy trying to thwart an anticipated attack from Iran on Israel in retaliation for Hamas political chief Ismail Hanieyh’s death, which it says “could happen as soon as this week”.