by Twitter’s future owner weighed in on the social network’s biggest question on Tuesday, leaving little room for doubt that if Elon Musk gets his way, the platform’s doors will be wide open for Trump.
“I think it was wrong to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said in an interview at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car summit. “I think that was a mistake.”
Trump received a permanent ban from the platform in January 2021 for inciting violence when thousands of his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol building.
Musk went on to explain his belief that banning Trump “alienated a large part of the country” and did nothing to silence the former president, a dubious claim given that the country closely followed Trump’s non-stop activity on Twitter for four consecutive years. …. Banning Trump from Twitter did not end Trump’s voice,” Musk said. “It will amplify it among the right and that is why it is morally wrong and completely stupid.”
For now, Musk appears to be buying into the former president’s assertion that he has no interest in returning to his old favorite social network, where he once communicated directly with nearly 90 million followers. For now, Trump is spending his days on his own fledgling social app, Truth Social.
In his comments, Musk did not directly address Trump’s role in the attack on Capitol Hill and instead focused on the political ramifications of the decision and his belief that only bots and spam accounts should face permanent bans from Twitter. He also claimed that the permanent bans “fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as a public square where everyone can voice their opinion.”
Asked directly if that would mean reinstating Trump, Musk claimed he would reverse the former president’s lifetime ban, calling it “a morally bad decision” that was “foolish in the extreme.”
“Obviously, I don’t own Twitter yet,” Musk said. “So this is definitely not something that will happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?” He also cited confusing comments from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that the platform should not issue lifetime bans on Twitter, despite Dorsey’s hands-on role in the decision to suspend Trump.
Despite his vision of a “free speech”-focused Twitter with very little moderation, Musk voiced support for some of Twitter’s existing content moderation tools, including temporary account suspensions and limited reach on Facebook. cases in which the content is illegal or “or simply destructive”. to the world.”
