Elon Musk is hosting a live interview with Trump on X, and he's trying really hard to avoid a repeat of the Ron DeSantis campaign launch meltdown
- Elon Musk says he's doing multiple "system scaling tests" ahead of his livestream with Donald Trump.
- Musk's X platform crashed repeatedly when it hosted Ron DeSantis' campaign launch last year.
It looks like Elon Musk is pulling out all stops to ensure that his upcoming interview with former President Donald Trump on Monday doesn't go awry.
"Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation with Donald Trump," Musk wrote in an X post on Sunday night.
The mercurial billionaire went on to stress test the X platform's by livestreaming himself gaming, twice.
Musk's first stream, which ran for about 19 minutes, had 2.1 million views while his second stream, which lasted for around 46 minutes, had 1.3 million views as of press time.
Ensuring X's stability is probably a top priority for Musk, considering the platform's spotty performance last year.
In May 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida launched his presidential campaign on X instead of on cable television. DeSantis' launch, however, didn't go quite as planned. The highly touted livestream got off to a rough start and encountered multiple technical difficulties.
The glitchy livestream was mocked by many, including the Trump campaign.
"Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch. And that's just the candidate!" a spokesperson for Trump told Business Insider then.
That said, the DeSantis debacle doesn't seem to have deterred Trump from the idea of doing a live-streamed X interview.
But while Trump may be happy to pop up on X for an interview, he's sticking to his own social media platform, Truth Social.
The once prolific tweeter decamped to Truth Social after he was banned from from the platform after the January 6 riots.
Although Musk reinstated Trump's X account in November 2022, Trump has only posted on it once — in August 2023 when he shared a picture of his mugshot and a link to his campaign website.
For what it's worth, Musk's avowed support for Trump may have been critical in slowly easing him back to the platform. The GOP nominee has been effusive in his praise for Musk and his businesses ever since Musk endorsed him.
On August 3, Trump told rally-goers in Georgia that he'd changed his mind on electric vehicles after getting the Tesla CEO's endorsement.
"I'm for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So, I have no choice," Trump told the crowd, adding that people should still have access to gas vehicles as well.
Representatives for Musk and the Trump campaign didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.