Elon Musk lifts Donald Trump’s Twitter ban
Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been reinstated.
The former US President was permanently blocked from the platform in January 2021 following the attack at the US Capitol in Washington – in which his supporters stormed the building while votes were being counted to verify Joe Biden’s election win – but the site’s new owner, Elon Musk, has now dropped his suspension, days after opening an online poll asking if the ‘Apprentice’ star should be allowed back.
Musk tweeted: “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
Shortly afterwards, @RealDonaldTrump was live again, but the 75-year-old businessman has yet to tweet from the account since the ban was lifted.
The 51-year-old businessman – who recently acquired the micro-blogging platform in a $44 billion deal – opened a poll about Trump being reinstated late last week.
Above the voting buttons, he wrote: “Reinstate former President Trump (sic)”
The Tesla boss followed his initial tweet with “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, a Latin expression that translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Elon later added: “Trump poll getting ~1M votes/hour! (sic)”
The billionaire recently approved the decision to reactivate the Twitter accounts of Kathy Griffin and Jordan Peterson.
However, he claimed at the time that the “Trump decision has not yet been made”.
Trump, 76, was suspended from the platform in January 2021, following the attack on the Capitol.
The micro-blogging platform explained that the account was being suspended due to “the risk of further incitement of violence”.
Twitter said in a statement: “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.”
Musk said in May he would reverse Trump’s ban if he bought the platform because he felt the decision was a “mistake”.
He said: “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.
“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.”
