WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Republican presidential

candidate Donald Trump's scheduled interview with Elon Musk on

the billionaire entrepreneur's social media platform X on Monday

evening ran into technical difficulties at the outset, with many

users unable to access the live stream and Musk postponing the

event.

The site showed the page was "not available" shortly after

the scheduled start time of 8 p.m. Eastern Time (0000 GMT

Tuesday) for many users. As of 8:20 p.m., the page listed about

214,000 participants, though the event had not yet started,

presumably due to the technical problems.

"There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X," Musk wrote

in an X post at 8:18 p.m., referring to a type of cyberattack in

which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt

to shut it down.

"Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed

with a smaller number of live listeners and post the

conversation later."

He said minutes later: "We will proceed with the smaller

number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the

unedited audio immediately thereafter."

The snafu recalled a similar event in May 2023, when Florida

Governor Ron DeSantis suffered a chaotic start to his bid for

the Republican presidential nomination due to glitches on the

platform.

The hour-long broadcast lost sound for extended stretches,

and thousands of users were either unable to join or were

dropped. DeSantis ultimately lost the nomination to Trump.

At the time, Trump mocked DeSantis on his own, social media

platform, Truth Social. "My Red Button is bigger, better,

stronger, and is working (TRUTH!)" Trump posted, "Yours does

not."

Ahead of Monday's event, Musk had written: "Am going to do

some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the

conversation."

The interview was a fresh opportunity for Trump to seize the

limelight at a time when his campaign is facing new headwinds.

His Democratic rival for the Nov. 5 election, Vice President

Kamala Harris, has erased Trump's lead in opinion polls and

energized Democratic voters with a series of high-energy

rallies. Harris' momentum could get another boost from the

Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.

Trump returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday

morning for the first time in a year, posting a video

highlighting his claim without evidence that the four criminal

prosecutions he faces are politically motivated.

He quickly followed with a half-dozen other posts, reviving

an account that served as a main method of communication in

previous campaigns and his four years in the White House,

including his followers' Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump's last X message before Monday was posted in August

2023 appealing for donations and showing a mug shot after he was

booked at an Atlanta jail in relation to felony charges tied to

his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia.

Trump's access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was

restored a month into Musk's ownership of X after being

suspended by the platform's previous owners following the Jan. 6

attack, citing concerns he would incite violence.

Trump frequently posts on his Truth Social platform, which

was launched in February 2022, but his posts there reach a much

smaller audience than on X.

The interview on Musk's social media platform allows Trump

to reach a different audience than the conservative faithful who

attend his rallies and watch his interviews on Fox News.

Some X users also reported seeing advertisements pop up

supporting Trump. X and the Trump campaign did not immediately

respond to a request for information on whether there had been a

pro-Trump ad buy.

Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in 2022. X

earlier this month sued a global advertising alliance and

several major companies, accusing them of unlawfully conspiring

to boycott the site and causing it to lose revenue.

MUSK'S SHIFT RIGHT

Musk could prove to be an unusual interviewer. The world's

richest person backed Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 but

has tacked rightward since and endorsed the Republican following

the attempted assassination of Trump in July.

Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla, also

started an external super PAC spending group to support Trump's

campaign. The political action committee is now under

investigation in Michigan for possible violations of state laws

on gathering voter information.

Trump, a longstanding critic of electric vehicles, shifted

gears after Musk's endorsement.

"I'm for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon endorsed

me very strongly. So I have no choice," Trump said at an early

August rally.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fein, campaigning in

support of Harris, called Trump a "sellout."

The Biden administration has worked to popularize electric

vehicles through tax breaks and other support as part of its

broader goal of reducing carbon emissions blamed for climate

change.

Republicans in Congress have opposed those subsidies.

Senator JD Vance, Trump's vice presidential running mate, said

the Biden policy merely subsidizes rich people who purchase the

cars.

Musk has been involved in a swirl of additional

controversies. He has falsely accused Biden and the Democratic

Party of opening U.S. borders to undocumented immigrants in a

ploy to boost the number of potential Democratic voters.

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections.

Both Trump and Musk have amplified false claims about voter

fraud, which is virtually nonexistent in the U.S.

Musk in November 2023 endorsed an antisemitic post on X that

said members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against

white people. He defended himself, saying the user was speaking

"the actual truth." Musk has also attacked the Anti-Defamation

League, a nonprofit that works to fight antisemitism, accusing

it, without evidence, of being responsible for a drop in

advertising on X.