Elon Musk announced on Saturday that Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States, will be reinstated to Twitter. After launching a poll asking Twitter users if Trump should be reinstated, Musk decided to let the more than 15 million users have their way, and bring the former president back onto the platform.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk said. Moments later, the account was restored, and all past tweets were visible. The follower count is rising.
After an astounding 15 million votes in 24 hours, the majority of Twitter users voted in favor of restoring the former President’s account.
Early Saturday, Musk suggested that bots were influencing the results, noting that “the bot attack is impressive to watch!” He later pointed out that they might be “running out of steam.”
Trump has said that he would not necessarily be ammenable to returning to the platform, though his tweets, when he was president, made world news. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump said on Saturday that he would stick to his own, Trump-owned, Truth Social social media platform.
“Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very very strong, and I’ll be staying there. But I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it, because I don’t see any reason for it,” he said.
He praised Truth Social, saying “Truth Social is through the roof,” he said, “it’s doing phenomenally well, the press needs to talk about it, but it’s doing phenomenally well. I think engagement is much better than it is with Twitter. And It’s taking care of voices that really want to be taken care of, and smart voices, brilliant voices, voices that in many cases are both sides,” he said.
However, Trump has not yet responded to Musk’s reinstatement of his account.
Trump was banished from the popular social media platform on January 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol riot on January 6.
Twitter said in a statement at the time: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.
“However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”
Two of Trump’s last tweets on the platform were calls for peacefulness from his supporters.
Since then, many things at Twitter have changed, most notably, its ownership. Musk bought the platform with a statement that he would uphold free speech, and with a promise to be a free speech absolutist.
Trump was banned from the platform while he was still in office, and now he is running for a second term in office, having just announced that intention on Tuesday.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
