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, writes Al Jazeera.

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.

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.