Donald Trump makes bizarre claim in delayed chat with Elon Musk on X

Donald Trump told Elon Musk that "illegal immigration saved my life" in a much-anticipated X conversation that was delayed due to technical issues.

The site showed that the page was "not available" shortly after the scheduled start time of 8pm Eastern Time (1am UK time) for some users, though more than 115,000 people appeared to have joined successfully.

Mr Musk then tweeted: "There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down."

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack is designed to force a website, computer, or online service offline.

This is done by flooding the target with many requests, consuming its capacity and rendering it unable to respond to legitimate requests.

The event started around 40 minutes late with Musk opening the chat talking about the assassination attempt on Mr Trump.

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The tech billionaire could be heard laughing through large sections - no more so than when Mr Trump claimed "illegal immigration saved my life".

The Republican nominee told how he had turned his head to look at an illegal immigration chart during the rally on 13 July - meaning gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks missed.

He went on to criticise Democrat rival Kamala Harris's immigration record, claiming she oversaw a huge rise in unauthorised crossings after being put "in charge" of the Mexico-US border.

Ms Harris co-ordinated with foreign countries to address poverty and security issues driving people into the US but was not directly responsible for border policy.

There was one moment in the conversation with Musk where Mr Trump said he saw Ms Harris on the cover of Time magazine. "She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live," he said. "It was a drawing, and actually she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania. She didn't look like Kamala. But, of course, she's a beautiful woman."

Mr Trump complained extensively about undocumented immigrants making their way to the US.

"Elon, what's happened is unbelievable," he told 1.2 million X listeners during his chat.

"They're coming from the Congo, and 22 people came in from the Congo recently, and they're murderers."

The pair also discussed government efficiency, nuclear power and tax cuts in the two-hour broadcast.

The technical issues will bring back bad memories for Elon Musk from 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.

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At the time, Mr Trump mocked Mr 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."