Elon Musk Says He Would Lift Twitter Ban On Trump Once Deal Closes

Since news of Elon Musk’s $43B Twitter buyout broke, and his plans on making it a free speech platform, one big question comes to mind, what will happen to Donald Trump. Recall that Twitter and other social platforms issued Trump a ban after a mob of his supporters launched an assault on the U.S. Capitol in Jan. 2021. Twitter claimed his tweets violated the platform’s policy barring “glorification of violence” and thereby opted for a permanent ban. The ban happened while Jack Dorsey was still the company’s CEO. 

In an interview conducted remotely which took place at the Future of the Car conference, which was also live-streamed, questions were raised about the ban and what the outcome will be for Donald Trump if Tesla and SpaceX CEO owns Twitter. In response to the question, Musk said “I guess the answer is that I, I would reverse the permanent ban.” 

Musk further said while citing a shared opinion with Jack Dorsey about permanent bans “Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts… I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk added “I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

In a statement last month, Trump claims that he wouldn’t return to the social network if given the chance, rather he will use his own app. Although recently a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit by former US President Donald Trump, which challenges the micro-blogging platform- Twitter over his suspension from Twitter.

On the takeover of Twitter, Musk had something to say “I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?” It is expected that Musk will sit as CEO once the takeover terms are complete.