CNN
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X owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday that a distributed denial-of-service attack overloaded the company’s servers, leaving him unable to begin his interview with former President Donald Trump as thousands of people trying to join the conversation complained they could not listen.

“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. We are working to stop it,” Musk said in a post on X. “In the worst case scenario, we will continue with a smaller number of live listeners and publish the conversation later.”

It was not immediately clear whether malicious actors were behind the incident, which Musk called an “attack,” or whether the problem was simply caused by too many users trying to listen in on the conversation.

“DDOS,” or “Distributed Denial of Service,” is a common attack method in which hackers flood a site with fake traffic in an attempt to overload its systems and take it offline.

Musk said in a separate post that X “tested the system earlier today with 8 million concurrent listeners.”

Trump posted on X – formerly known as Twitter – for the first time in nearly a year on Monday morning before holding a conversation with X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the platform later in the day.

Among Trump’s X-posts was a video of previous comments from his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in support of progressive policies – a point the former president had also highlighted at his recent campaign rallies.

Harris said she doesn’t want to “treat undocumented people crossing the border like criminals” when asked if she supports abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that she thinks it’s “wrong and backwards” to think more police officers will make for more security. She also expressed support for progressive policy proposals such as “Medicare for All” and the Green New Deal.

The video ends with the words on the screen: “Reject San Francisco radical Kamala Harris.”

Trump also released a two-and-a-half-minute video showing coverage of the August 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago resort by federal authorities and his indictment by the Justice Department. Trump regularly claims on the campaign trail that he is the victim of what he calls “political persecution,” and the video appears to back up that claim.

“I never thought something like this could happen in America. The only crime I have committed is fearlessly defending our nation from those who would destroy it. The more a broken system tells you you are wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep going,” Trump says in an off-screen voice.

The video also includes phrases from Trump’s campaign speeches, including: “They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you. They’re not after me. They’re after you, and I just happen to get in the way.”

Trump also posted a message from his campaign’s official X account promoting his interview with Musk on the platform on Monday evening.

“It will be the interview of the century!” the article says in capital letters.

The last time Trump was active on X, he posted a photo of his mugshot from August 24, 2023, after being indicted in an Atlanta jail in the Georgia election rigging case. In the meantime, his preferred social media site was his own platform, Truth Social.

Trump also released a video on Monday showing him walking down a hallway while listening to audio recordings of his campaign speeches: “This is the final battle. With you by my side, we will destroy the deep state. We will drive the warmongers out of our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will throw out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will shake off the sick political class that hates our country. We will destroy the fake news media. And we will rid America of these villains once and for all.”

And in another post, Trump asked: “Are you better off now than when I was president?”

“Our economy is destroyed. Our borders have been erased. We are a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT again!” he wrote.

This story has been updated with additional information.