距离投票日82天
Musk’s Trump Talk: After Glitchy Start, a Two-Hour Ramble
美国东部时间周一晚上8点35分，埃隆·马斯克和前总统唐纳德·特朗普在X上的对谈直播在延迟35分钟后重新上线，但只维持了片刻。
特朗普的话筒打开，然后传来了一阵杂音。一秒钟后，他的话筒没声了。马斯克的账号原本已经登录并准备就绪，当时却暂时完全从直播对话中消失。
七分钟后，故障似乎得到解决，两人的对话开始。支持特朗普竞选总统的马斯克和特朗普互相称呼为“唐纳德”和“埃隆”。然后，他们就移民、经济以及拜登总统和民主党总统候选人、副总统贺锦丽展开了友好的交谈。据X称，两人对谈了两个多小时，有超过100万人同时观看。
“恭喜你，”特朗普在直播期间似乎有时口齿不清，他在提到这场直播的观众时说。“是不是得给我点报酬什么的？”
马斯克和特朗普在X上的对话被宣传为该社交媒体平台的胜利时刻，它于2022年被马斯克收购。特朗普曾经把这个平台当作自己的扩音器，直到2021年遭该平台封禁，后因马克斯而解禁。马斯克一直在努力争取，希望特朗普能够再次活跃在这个网站上。最终，这场活动麻烦不断的开场，以及两人随后的玩笑互动既展示了马斯克领导下的X的弱点，也体现了它的优势。
直播过程中出现的小问题再次令人们质疑X处理受到高度关注活动的能力。马斯克在没有提供证据的情况下将这次混乱归咎于“大规模的”分布式拒绝服务攻击，这是一种利用大量恶意网络流量令网站过载并使其下线的网络攻击。
然而，这次活动也说明了马斯克如何通过与重要公众人物建立关系，将X推到聚光灯下并吸引大量观众，同时利用该网站来进一步实现自己的政治利益。
“通过这次‘采访’，马斯克展示了他计划如何利用自己的平台来宣传唐纳德·特朗普的候选资格，”研究在线言论的加州大学欧文分校法学教授大卫·凯耶说。“他正在最大限度地利用X带给他的政治价值。反过来，人们对X的信任将出现两极分化。”
两人的对谈结束后，X首席执行官琳达·亚卡里诺表示，特朗普在X上进行竞选活动是该平台的胜利，称这场活动“囊括范围广泛、没有脚本，令人耳目一新”。马斯克和X均未回应置评请求。
特朗普竞选团队对X的技术故障不以为意，称这些问题是中国对手所为，并称这位前总统是“斗士”。
几天来，马斯克一直为特朗普在X的出现造势。周日晚，马斯克向他的1.93亿多粉丝发帖称：“保证有意思！”
周一，已经几年没有出现在X上的特朗普在该平台上发了10个帖子，分享竞选视频，宣传他与马斯克的对谈。马斯克很快将注意力拉回特朗普的帖子上，分享了一个米姆，其中一个女人在男人耳边低语说“唐纳德·特朗普又回到了X”，随后是一张皮肤上起鸡皮疙瘩的图片。
两人的对话原定于东部时间晚8点举行，却差点没能成功开始。许多试图收看的X用户在手机和电脑上加载直播时都遇到了困难。
“今天早些时候，我们做了800万听众同时在线的系统测试，”马斯克在晚上8点24分抱歉地发帖说。他随后将问题归咎于网络攻击，后来又同意一名X用户的帖子，即这次故障的原因是“民主党为了从两个严重干扰者手中‘拯救’民主而战”。
在马斯克收购X并裁员75%以上之后，该平台的服务可靠性受到了质疑。虽然X在很大程度上避免了大范围的故障，但特朗普这次使用的直播音频功能Spaces有时却会出现问题。
2023年5月，马斯克在X上与宣布竞选总统的佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯进行了实时音频对话。这次对话出现了很多技术问题，最后不得不中断。
为了避免在周一重蹈覆辙，马斯克利用周日晚上的时间测试了X的服务，用流媒体直播自己玩电子游戏。
据一位未被授权公开发言的X公司员工称，上周末，X公司还实施了“代码冻结”措施，阻止员工在未经高管许可的情况下对平台底层代码进行重大修改。冻结是重大事件发生前的标准做法，因为这样可以防止在最后一刻进行可能中断服务的调整。
然而，这些举动并没能防止X出现问题。周一，在公司内部，大量员工们在内部聊天室里抱怨无法访问特朗普—马斯克空间。
根据《纽约时报》看到的内部信息，在马斯克与特朗普的谈话比预定开始时间延误了几分钟后，一名X员工写道：“团队意识到Spaces存在问题，正在努力解决。”一些员工聚集在一个名为#spaces-war-room（Spaces作战室）的在线论坛上，诊断该服务存在的问题。
对话终于开始后，特朗普似乎对这种直播形式很感兴趣。他说：“很高兴能有这样一个平台，让我可以详细讨论一些问题。”他随后向马斯克表示祝贺，因为根据X上的计数器显示，直播的同时收听人数超过了130万。
特朗普竞选团队周一还在X上投放广告，其中一条出现在X的热门话题页面顶部，宣传特朗普与马斯克的对话。此类广告投放24小时的费用高达50万美元。
马斯克在聊天中展示了自己的政治观点，包括对气候、外交政策和联邦支出的看法。他劝说特朗普软化在移民问题上的措辞，但也同意特朗普关于南部边境移民助长犯罪的评论，尽管学术研究并不支持这一观点。
马斯克说：“如果我们继续开放边境四年——情况会比过去三年半更糟——我不确定我们是否还能拥有一个国家。”
据特朗普的一名幕僚发布的一张照片显示，特朗普是在其马阿拉歌度假村一个镶木板的房间内参加对话的。周二，马斯克在X发帖说，他本人一直在“朋友的怀俄明州牧场”。
在特朗普和马斯克谈论了委内瑞拉、哈里斯和其他话题之后，马斯克以自己的政治历程结束了他们在X上这场缺乏重点的对话。
马斯克说：“我以前并没有真正积极参与政治，”他还说，他过去曾支持过民主党候选人。他对听众说：“我认为你们应该支持唐纳德·特朗普竞选总统。”
对话结束之后，特朗普没有在X上发帖，而是他在自己的社交媒体服务网站Truth Social上分享了对13位共和党国会候选人的支持。
At 8:35 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, a live audio stream on X of a conversation between Elon Musk and former President Donald J. Trump flickered to life after a 35-minute delay — but only for a moment.
Mr. Trump’s mic came on, and a shuffling sound was heard. A second later, his mic cut out. Mr. Musk’s account, which had been logged in and ready, then momentarily disappeared from the conversation entirely.
Seven minutes later, the glitches appeared to be resolved and the discussion began. Mr. Musk, who has endorsed Mr. Trump’s presidential run, and Mr. Trump greeted each other as “Donald” and “Elon.” They then began a friendly chat about immigration, the economy and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The two men talked for over two hours with more than one million people listening in at the same time, according to X.
“I congratulate you,” Mr. Trump, who appeared to lisp at times, said to Mr. Musk about the livestream’s audience. “Do I get paid for this or what?”
The conversation on X between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump had been billed as a triumphant moment for the social media platform, which Mr. Musk bought in 2022. He had been trying to woo Mr. Trump to become active again on a site he once wielded like a megaphone before being barred in 2021 and then, by Mr. Musk’s doing, reinstated. In the end, the event’s bumpy beginning and ensuing banter showcased both the weaknesses and strengths of X under Mr. Musk.
The hiccups getting the livestream going renewed questions about X’s ability to handle high-profile events. Without providing evidence, Mr. Musk blamed the snafu on a “massive” distributed denial of service attack, a type of cyberattack that uses floods of malicious web traffic to overwhelm sites and knock them offline.
Yet the event also illustrated how Mr. Musk can propel X into the spotlight and draw large audiences by building relationships with major public figures, using the site to further his own political interests.
“With this ‘interview,’ Musk has shown how he plans to use his platform to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies online speech. “He is maximizing the political value that X gives him. In turn, trust in X will be polarized.”
After the chat concluded, Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, said Mr. Trump’s campaign appearance on X was a win for the platform, calling it “wide ranging, unscripted and wildly refreshing.” Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump’s campaign brushed off X’s technical glitches, suggesting that the problems were the work of Chinese adversaries and calling the former president “a fighter.”
For days, Mr. Musk had built up anticipation for Mr. Trump’s appearance on X. “Entertainment guaranteed!” Mr. Musk posted on Sunday night to his more than 193 million followers.
On Monday, Mr. Trump, who has been mostly off X for several years, posted 10 times on the platform, sharing campaign videos and promoting his conversation with Mr. Musk. Mr. Musk quickly drew attention back to Mr. Trump’s posts, sharing a meme that showed a woman whispering into a man’s ear that “Donald Trump is back on X,” followed by an image of goose bumps rising on skin.
But their discussion, which was scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time, almost didn’t get off the ground. Many X users who tried to tune in struggled to load the livestream on their phones and computers.
“We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today,” Mr. Musk posted apologetically at 8:24 p.m. He then blamed a cyberattack for the issues and later agreed with an X user’s post that the outage was caused by “Dems fighting to ‘save’ Democracy from two massive disrupters.”
X has run into questions about the reliability of its service after Mr. Musk bought the site and eliminated more than 75 percent of the company’s employees. While X has largely avoided widespread outages, Spaces, the live audio feature on which Mr. Trump appeared, has at times been troublesome.
In May 2023, Mr. Musk hosted a live audio conversation on X with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was announcing his presidential run. The event was marred by technical problems and crashed.
To avoid a repeat performance on Monday, Mr. Musk had spent Sunday evening testing X’s service by streaming himself playing a video game.
Over the weekend, X had also implemented a “code freeze,” which blocks employees from making major changes to the platform’s underlying code without executive permission, according to an X employee who was not authorized to speak publicly. Freezes are standard practice ahead of major events because they prevent last-minute tweaks that could interrupt the service.
Yet those moves did not stop X from sputtering. Inside the company on Monday, employees flooded an internal chat room with complaints that they could not access the Trump-Musk Space.
“Team is aware of issues with Spaces and are working on it,” one X employee wrote a few minutes after Mr. Musk’s conversation with Mr. Trump missed its scheduled start time, according to internal messages seen by The New York Times. Some workers gathered in an online forum called “#spaces-war-room” to diagnose the problems with the service.
Once the discussion finally got underway, Mr. Trump seemed to warm up to the livestreaming format. “It’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length,” he said. He later congratulated Mr. Musk as the stream topped more than 1.3 million concurrent listeners, according to a counter on X.
The Trump campaign also ran ads on X on Monday, including one on the top of X’s trending topics page, to promote Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Musk. Such ads can cost as much as $500,000 for 24 hours.
Mr. Musk used the chat to showcase his own political views, including on climate, foreign policy and federal spending. He nudged Mr. Trump to soften his rhetoric on immigrants but also agreed with Mr. Trump’s assessment that immigration at the southern border contributed to crime, though academic studies have not supported the idea.
“If we have another four more years of open borders — and it’s going to be even worse than the last three-and-a-half years — I’m not sure we’ve got a country,” Mr. Musk said.
Mr. Trump participated in the conversation from a wood-paneled room at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a photo posted by one of his staffers. On Tuesday, Mr. Musk posted on X that he had been at a “friend’s ranch in Wyoming.”
After Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk had talked about Venezuela, Ms. Harris and other topics, Mr. Musk closed their meandering conversation on X by musing about his own political journey.
“I haven’t really been active in politics before,” Mr. Musk said, adding that he had supported Democratic candidates in the past. “I think you should support Donald Trump for president,” he told listeners.
Mr. Trump did not post on X afterward. Instead, he shared endorsements of 13 Republican Congressional candidates on his own social media service, Truth Social.
