Whats worse for a company: being hacked or having technical difficulties? I would have thought being hacked but...

At the Trump-Musk interview:

1) There were technical difficulties which caused it to start late and have some other problems.

2) Musk and (I think) Trump claimed that this was a DDOS attack because people were trying to prevent Donald from having his say (listen to the beginning of the interview).

3) Experts have said it was not a DDOS attack, or any kind of attack.

(For the interview see here. If the link does not work either blame a DDOS hack or technical difficulties.)

When a company is hacked, to they admit it? This is hard to tell since if it never comes out, how do you know? 

Would a company rather admit to the public they had tech difficulties OR admit to the public they were attacked? I would think they would rather admit to the public they had tech difficulties. 

I suspect that X had tech difficulties because LOTS of people wanted to hear Trump.

Faced with this, what are Elon's options:

Options

1) Claim that this was caused because so many people wanted to hear Trump that the system could not handle it. This would make Trump look good, not make Elon look too bad, and is probably true so it won't be discovered later that he lied.

2) Claim that his system was attacked. This allows Trump to claim his enemies are out to get him, thus pushing the narrative that he is a victim. But Musk looks worse than if the system was just overloaded. Plus its false which will (and did) come out. However, there were absolutely no consequences to lying. 

I think its  unusual for a company to lie by claiming they were hacked when they weren't. If you know of any other examples then please comment.