Elon Musk on Monday held a digital version of the town-hall-style rallies he has hosted on behalf of former President Donald Trump. But the event on X ended just a few minutes after it started, when Musk encountered technical difficulties.
The event began streaming more than 20 minutes after its scheduled 8 p.m. ET start time. When the billionaire X owner joined, he promoted a podcast interview he did with Joe Rogan and offered to take questions. An operator then attempted to take questions from four listeners who apparently had been on hold, but the line went silent when he called on them.
The operator asked Musk if he believes “we will win” on Tuesday – presumably referring to Trump, whom Musk has supported to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
“Well, I think if people vote tomorrow, we’re definitely going to win,” he said.
Musk then called off the event, saying, “Let’s cancel this, since we seem to be having some technical issues.” Musk promised to start a regular livestream Spaces event on X. The X Spaces event Musk started immediately following the town hall, lasted one minute and appeared to have no audio.
Minutes later, Musk turned his attention instead to a social media-famous squirrel that was euthanized over the weekend. He also said he would not restart his Q&A and encouraged followers to listen to his Rogan interview instead. Rogan endorsed Trump in an X post promoting the episode Monday night.
The Monday night town hall marks just the latest election-related event that Musk attempted to host on X that was plagued by technical difficulties.
An August interview between Musk and Trump that was streamed on X was delayed by more than 40 minutes because of glitches. Musk blamed the issue on a cyberattack, but some experts speculated it was simply caused by too many users trying to listen. A similar event last year to kick off Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign was also delayed by 25 minutes and marred by technical difficulties.
