Donald Trump’s big return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter did not start as planned.

Trump and Elon Musk, the owner of X, were scheduled to have what the tech titan called a “live conversation” at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. “It should be highly entertaining!” Musk posted ahead of the event.

But more than 25 minutes after the scheduled start time, many users received error messages and were unable to log in before the announced live interview. One message read: “Details not available.”

Trump’s team posted that the “interview on X is being overwhelmed by listeners logging in.”

The talk was intended to be a way for the former president to directly reach potentially millions of voters. It was also an opportunity for X, a platform that relies heavily on politics, to redeem itself after some troubles.

In May 2023, for example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used the platform to officially announce his presidential candidacy. It was a disastrous event marred by technical glitches and overloaded by more than 400,000 people trying to dial in.

Before his conversation with Trump, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “some scaling tests of the system” to handle the expected large number of participants.

Trump’s supporters were not satisfied with the results.

“Unavailable???? I planned my whole day around this,” wrote conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

“Please tell Elon we can’t attend,” posted billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.

The upcoming chat sparked a cautionary response from Europe. Thierry Breton, a French business manager and EU commissioner for the internal market, warned Musk of a potential “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his interview with Trump. In a letter published on X, Breton called on Musk to “ensure X’s compliance” with EU law, including the Digital Services Act, which was passed in 2022 to address a range of issues, including disinformation.

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In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called on the EU to “mind its own business instead of trying to interfere in the US presidential election.” He said the EU was “an enemy of free speech and has no authority to dictate how we campaign.”

Musk, who identified himself as a Democrat until a few years ago, endorsed Trump’s candidacy two days after the former president was injured in an attack on a rally in Pennsylvania last month.

Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk’s posts and actions on the platform were increasingly moving to the right, and he also used X to try to influence political discourse around the world. He clashed with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he calls the “woke mind virus,” and spread false claims that Democrats were secretly flying in migrants to vote in the U.S. election.

Musk has also restored previously suspended accounts, such as that of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and that of Trump, who was kicked off the platform – then called Twitter – two days after the Jan. 6 violence, with the company citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” as the reason. By November 2022, Musk had bought the company and Trump’s account was restored, although the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, insisting he was happier on his own page, Truth Social, which he launched during the suspension.

Hours before his interview with Musk, Trump posted a two-and-a-half-minute video on his X account that included footage from his time in office and an audio recording of him saying one of his standard campaign slogans, alluding to the lawsuits pending against him: “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I’m just standing in their way and I’m not going to move.”

But Trump’s audience on X is several times larger than that on Truth Social, which went public earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his mostly inactive X account has 88 million followers. Musk’s account, which will host the interview, has more than 193 million followers.

Trump’s campaign team did not immediately respond to a question about whether he would also publish his interview with Musk on his own accounts, including X.

The former president has posted only once on X recently, a photo of his mug shot after he turned himself in at an Atlanta jail a year ago on charges he was part of a conspiracy to overturn his election loss in the state.

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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

Meg Kinnard, Associated Press