Trump’s story resurfaced on Twitter after Elon Musk’s poll showed he supports his reinstatement.
Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account, nearly two years after the former US president was banned from the platform for inciting violence.
Trump’s story resurfaced on Twitter on Saturday after Musk, the platform’s new owner, conducted a survey on the social media site that showed little support for allowing Trump to return.
More than 15 million people voted asking whether Trump’s account should be reinstated, with a narrow majority of 51.8 percent voting in favor.
“People have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk said.
But Trump said earlier on Saturday that he had no interest in returning to the platform.
“I don’t see why,” the former president said via video when asked if he wanted to return to Twitter by the group at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting.
People have spoken.
Trump will be reinstated.
The voice of the people, the voice of God. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022
Trump said he would continue with his new platform Truth Social, an app created by the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which he said had better users than Twitter and was doing “very well”.
Trump, who on Tuesday launched a bid to regain the White House in 2024, also praised Musk and said he liked him.
But the former president also said Twitter was plagued by bots, fake accounts and that the problems it faced were “shocking”.
Musk first said in May that he plans to reverse Trump’s ban, and the timing of the former president’s return was being closely watched – and feared – by many Twitter users.
Musk tried to assure users and advertisers that such an idea would be considered by the content management board with people with “different opinions”, and no account refunds would be made before the board meets.
He said Twitter would not reinstate banned users until there was a “clear solution”.
This week, Musk reinstated actress Kathy Griffin, who was banned from changing her name to “Elon Musk”, which violated his new law against impersonation without identifying it as a parody account.
There has been no news about the reinstatement process or the moderation board.
If Trump doesn’t return to Twitter, it could ease concerns among major advertisers, who have already been affected by Musk’s massive overhaul of the platform.
He has cut his workforce in half and cut the company’s trust and safety team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of fake news and harmful content.
These actions and Musk’s tweets have pushed major companies to halt advertising on the site as they monitor the platform’s handling of hate speech.
On Saturday, Bloomberg reported that Twitter could lay off more employees in its sales and affiliate divisions, naming undisclosed locations, just days after the engineers resigned.
