Trump has been saying that he "knows" Putin and North Korea's ruler Kim Jong Un.

"They're smart and they're vicious," he says.

"When they see a Kamala or sleepy Joe they can't believe it," he says, mispronouncing the vice-president's first name.

He goes on to describe a time he allegedly counselled Putin against invading Ukraine.

"I told him, 'don't do it. You cant do it, Vladimir," he says he told him.

"He said 'no way', and I said 'way'," says Trump.

A safe spacepublished at 02:31 British Summer Time 13 August 2024

02:31 BST 13 August 2024

Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent

Twitter Space is clearly a safe space for Trump.

Less of an interview and more of an easy conversation - Musk is very fawning and doesn’t push back on some of Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims on immigration.

He often says without any evidence that other countries are sending violent and ill criminals on purpose.

Musk does offer something ever so slightly contrarian to say immigrants can be a good thing, but does acquiesce to Trump’s view fairly quickly.

Immigration is the issue that Trump is the strongest on with voters. He has gone after Kamala Harris on this, dubbing her a failed “border czar” even though as VP her portfolio was focused more on the drivers of migration from Central America.

Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if it wasn't for Biden, Trump has claimed.

Musk does not push back on this claim and tells Trump he's made "an excellent point".

"I got along with Putin very well, and he respected me," says Trump, adding that he used to speak to Putin often.

"We would talk about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. But I told him don't do it," he claims.

Mike Wendling
US reporter

About half an hour into the chat, X's own metrics say that 1.2m people are listening to the conversation live.

By contrast, when Musk helped launch Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces last year, a peak of about 300,000 people were listening live.

Today's numbers are tiny compared to televised broadcasts of several other significant events during this campaign.

More than 51m people watched the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, according to the Nielsen ratings agency.

And 28m watched Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention last month.

Emma Vardy
US reporter

Trump says he is planning to return to Butler in Pennsylvania for another campaign event, as the last one was brought to an abrupt end when the shots rang out.

Donald Trump jokes that he will start his next speech in Butler with “As I was saying…”

“Before you were rudely interrupted” quips Elon Musk.

How many illegal immigrants have entered the US under Biden?published at 02:14 British Summer Time 13 August 2024

02:14 BST 13 August 2024

TRUMP CLAIM: Trump has turned to the issue of immigration, one of his main campaigning issues that helped kickstart his 2016 presidential bid.

The Republican presidential nominee claims without offering evidence that migrants are coming from "insane asylums" around the world.

"You have millions of people coming in a month, and she gets up and she pretends like she's gonna do something," he says, referring to Kamala Harris. He claims there are 20 million illegal immigrants in the US.

VERDICT: It isn’t possible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have entered the US across its southern border during President Biden’s time in office but official data suggests lower numbers than Trump has previously claimed.

Since January 2021, the US Customs and Border Protection agency says, external, there have been 10.5 million encounters of illegal migrants by enforcement officers in the US, with more than 8 million of those crossing over the southern border.

It’s worth noting that there could be encounters with the same person attempting to cross the border multiple times.

This is a significant overall increase on the four years under Donald Trump, and is also the highest figure recorded under any US administration.

Since Biden introduced regulations in early June restricting the right for those crossing the border to claim asylum, the numbers of people apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border has dropped dramatically.

US Border Patrol agents apprehended around 57,000 migrants along the border in July - the lowest recorded since September 2020.

The numbers are down significantly from December, when around 250,000 migrants were caught crossing the border.

The small sign on X that shows who has the power in this interviewpublished at 02:02 British Summer Time 13 August 2024

02:02 BST 13 August 2024

Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent

Elon Musk opens up by saying this is meant to be an opportunity for open minded voters to get a sense of what it’s like to talk with Donald Trump. But Musk is taking sides - making clear through his tone he supports Trump and confirms again he is endorsing him. The Twitter Space shows Trump as host and Musk as co-host, so we know who the power lies with.

Trump is hoping this interview will help him gain much momentum after President Biden dropped out and VP Kamala Harris reinvigorated the Democratic party base. Musk had to apologise for such a late glitchy and embarassing start though. So no room for much of a triumph.

At the Republican National Convention, we were told Trump had changed and would adopt a new unified tone. That didn’t quite materialise.

Trump also said he may never talk about the assassination attempt again - but that’s been the only issue he’s been talking about so far, and in depth.

Trump says it has made him more of a believer in God now than before - which will no doubt be music to the ears of his religious base.

Trump was also complimentary about the female agent who was with him on stage that day. Musk remains quiet about the fact the agent received a torrent of brutal criticism on X, including from Musk himself. He had questioned her abilities and why she was hired.

We're now hearing from Donald Trump. Trump starts by congratulating Musk for "breaking every record" for the large number of listeners they have for this event. It's not clear what record he is referring to.

Currently, X's interface says there are about 1 million listeners.

Elon starts by asking Trump about the assassination attempt, when Trump was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump laughs and says it was "not pleasant" before talking at length about his experience.

Musk starts by referring to a distributed denial of services, which he says "saturated all of our data lines".

He claims the alleged cyber attack shows there is opposition in the US to hearing what Trump has to say.

He says the interview will be informal, to help "open-minded independent voters who are just trying to make up their mind".

Stick with us.

We are now underway. Stick with us, we will bring you updates as they happen. Elon Musk is speaking first.

We're now 40 minutes past when the event was due to begin, and the hold music has finally ended.

There is now dead silence coming through Twitter Spaces.

At one point there were occasional sounds of heavy breathing, rustling, and what sounded like objects being moved.

Meanwhile, Twitter says more than 960,000 accounts are watching. We are unable to verify this number.

Twitter Spaces lists Trump as the host. It appeared as though Musk was removed from the Space at one point, but he is now back in it.

The delay of Trump and Musk's conversation on X, formerly known as Twitter, is not the first time the platform has had issues during a high-profile interview.

In May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis planned to announce his 2024 presidential bid in a first-of-its-kind Twitter Space event with Musk. The event was billed as a monumental moment for the social-media platform under Musk's new ownership.

Instead, it was delayed and marred by embarrassing glitches. Musk said the issues were because of the overwhelming number of people trying to tune in, which strained servers.

After delays, DeSantis made his announcement - about 30 minutes later than anticipated. The Republican ended his presidential bid in January and is backing Trump for the nomination.

In a new social media post, Musk just wrote that the plan is now to "proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30" - 30 minutes later than when the event was originally due to begin.

He said Twitter will "then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter".

Meanwhile, it's 8:33pm on the US east coast now and the event still has yet to start.

It's now been more than 20 minutes since the event was supposed to begin, and those of us who have been able to log into Twitter Spaces are still hearing hold music playing.

"There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X," Musk just posted, referring to a distributed denial of service cyber attack.

DDOS attacks are attempts to overload a website to make it hard to use or inaccessible.

"Working on shutting it down," Musk wrote.

"Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later."

He followed up in a separate post, saying: "We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today."

Image source, Twitter

The word "crashed" is now trending on X/Twitter, as users post about the technical glitches affecting the conversation scheduled to be aired on Twitter Spaces.

More than 25,000 tweets have used the word, according to Twitter.

Not all are criticising the platform. Some are Trump supporters who are boasting that his interview has "crashed" the internet.

Image source, X/Twitter

It's now past 20:00 EDT and the feed on X/Twitter is off to a glitchy start.

Some users - including those in our newsroom - have recieved error messages while trying to log on.

It seems reminiscent of the announcement by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who used his chat with Musk on Twitter to announce his presidential campaign.

That event was also plagued by technological errors.

Donald Trump's chat with billionaire supporter Elon Musk is due to begin in the next few minutes.

Audio from the event will be streamed at 20:00EDT (01:00BST) on X/Twitter.

At this stage, there appears to be tech issues for some users trying to connect to the stream.

You can follow along with us for the latest updates and analysis.

The hashtag #TwitterBlackout is trending online ahead of the planned interview with Trump and Musk.

Some users are urging people stop using Twitter, now known as X, at 20:00 EDT, when the interview is set to happen, with the aim of not giving the pair additional attention.

A self-styled "free speech absolutist", Musk had been critical of Twitter's management and its moderation policies before he bought it, and allowed a number of controversial figures - who had been banned off the platform - to return, including Trump.

Another hashtag, #GoBackToTruthSocial, was also picking up steam before the interview, with people urging the former president to instead use the social media platform he created, Truth Social.

The evolution of Trump and Musk’s social media relationshippublished at 00:46 British Summer Time 13 August 2024

00:46 BST 13 August 2024

Katharine Sharpe
Technology reporter

How have Trump and Musk, two of the world’s highest-profile social media users, publicly interacted online up till now?

It’s slightly tricky to judge given Trump was banned from X in 2021, before Musk took over the platform - and had largely refused to return to posting there, despite being reinstated by Musk in 2022 (he did share a single photo of his police mugshot in 2023, and has posted several times today ahead of this interview).

That reticence is partly because, following the ban, Trump founded his social media rival Truth Social. On X, Musk has tweeted or mentioned Trump dozens of times - but over the past couple of years has transitioned to fully supporting the former president.

Trump appears to admire Musk - describing him once as a “great genius.” But he has seemingly only interacted with him a few times on socials, such as to congratulate him over a SpaceX rocket launch or on his decision to build a car plant in Texas.

There’s some mutual admiration, but this interview is also motivated by mutual interest. Donald Trump wants to regain the initiative in the presidential race.

Musk will be hoping it drives traffic to X, and reinforces the idea - undermined somewhat by his erratic ownership - that it is the platform where news is made.

Max Matza
US reporter

Image source, Getty Images

The FBI has confirmed it has opened an investigation into allegations from the Trump campaign that it was targeted by hackers working for the Iranian government.

Trump's campaign told the BBC on Monday that its documents were illegally obtained by "foreign sources hostile to the United States".

Iranian officials have denied any connection to the hack and the US government has not formally accused Iran.

According to the Washington Post, three staff members of the Biden-Harris campaign were also targeted by phishing emails in the days before President Joe Biden announced that he was quitting the race.

A Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement to the media that the campaign "vigilantly monitors and protects against cyberthreats, and we are not aware of any security breaches of our systems".

Read more here