United States Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump has returned to the social media platform X as he attempts to recover from a rocky couple of weeks on the campaign trail.

On Monday, he marked the occasion by sitting down for a chat on Spaces with platform owner Elon Musk, who has publicly endorsed Trump’s campaign for re-election.

The discussion eventually got under way about 40 minutes late after what Musk claimed was a “massive” cyberattack on the platform, previously known as Twitter. He said the audience would be limited and a recording would be shared afterwards.

Over a rambling chat that lasted nearly two hours, the two men talked about Trump’s Democratic rival Kamala Harris, the European Union, China, climate change, censorship and migration. The Republican took the chance to talk at length on some of his pet topics and repeat claims he is the victim of a political vendetta, while Musk repeated his backing for Trump on multiple occasions.

After Trump claimed Harris was a “radical left lunatic” and “worse than Bernie Sanders”, Musk responded: “It’s essential that you win the election for the sake of the country.” About 1.2 million people were listening in.

In the hours leading up to Monday’s talk, Trump’s campaign played it up as “the interview of the century”. He also posted a string of campaign videos, attacking Harris and warning his followers about perceived threats from the political left.

Trump’s campaign has taken a hit since Joe Biden stood aside for Harris leaving 78-year-old Trump the oldest candidate in the race for president.

The vice president and her running mate Tim Walz have reenergised the Democrat campaign, appearing at a string of rallies in recent days. Recent polls have given her the edge over Trump in key battleground states in the Midwest.

The Harris campaign was dismissive of the chat.

“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself – self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in 2024,” it said in a statement posted on X after Trump and Musk finished talking.

A long absence

Trump’s social-media volley on X comes after a long absence from the platform, which used to be his bully pulpit of choice online.

But in 2021, in the final days of his presidency, Trump was suspended from posting to the site.

Twitter executives had cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” as the motivation for their decision: Just two days earlier – on January 6, 2021 – Trump supporters had attacked the United States Capitol after the Republican falsely claimed his defeat in the 2020 elections was the result of voter fraud.

But in October 2022, Musk took control of the social media platform in a $44bn deal. Shortly afterwards, he made good on a pledge to restore Trump to the platform, restoring his Twitter account that November.

Twitter was the first major platform to lift its ban on the former president after the events of January 6.

Still, Trump refused to use Twitter even after his reinstatement. Before Monday, he had only made a single post since 2021, to mark the day he surrendered to the Fulton County Jail in Georgia on August 24, 2023.

The post featured his mugshot and the all-caps message, “Election interference. Never surrender!” He was charged with criminal racketeering in the state for his alleged attempts to subvert the 2020 election, one of four criminal indictments he faces.

Trump currently has more than 88.2 million followers on X, which was renamed in 2023.