After buying Twitter
“Exile was wrong”: Musk wants Trump to tweet again
Elon Musk stands for a radical form of freedom of expression
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The news is likely to annoy many people around the world: Elon Musk has announced that Donald Trump can return to Twitter once the takeover is complete. The purchase should finally take place at the end of 2022.
Now Elons Musk has announced what many feared: the tech billionaire wants former President Donald Trump to return to Twitter. Then Trump would have the platform available in time for the 2024 election campaign. The decision to ban Trump was “morally wrong and just plain stupid,” Musk said in a video interview at a Financial Times event on Tuesday.
Trump was banned from Twitter after expressing sympathy for his supporters who stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the preceding weeks, Trump had fueled sentiment with baseless claims that an election win against Joe Biden was stolen through fraud.
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Donald Trump doesn’t want to go back
Trump recently said he didn’t want to go back to Twitter, even if he could. The presence on the platform, where he once had more than 80 million followers, could be important for a possible candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. Trump used Twitter very actively to mobilize his supporters and create atmosphere. He is trying to set up his own social media platform, which is struggling with start-up problems.
Musk said Trump’s ban on Twitter was a mistake because a large segment of the US public didn’t agree with it. And it didn’t mean that the ex-president was no longer able to make himself heard.
Takeover only at the end of 2022
It will be some time before it becomes clear whether Musk will actually get Twitter. The boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla agreed with the Twitter board of directors on a deal worth around 44 billion dollars, but is still dependent on enough shareholders wanting to cede their shares to him. Twitter and Musk aim to complete the acquisition by the end of the year.