Elon Musk Has Lifted Trump's Twitter Ban But the Ex-Prez Isn't Interested. Why & What Happens Now?

It was an action largely anticipated after the tech mogul Elon Musk took over Twitter. Now, it’s done – Donald Trump is back on the microblogging site. Musk reversed a ban that has kept the former US president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

After asking Twitter users to vote “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be reinstated, Musk made the announcement in the evening. With 51.8% of the vote, “yes” won. Previously, Musk had stated that before deciding whether to reinstate suspended accounts, Twitter would set up new rules and a “content moderation council.”

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”

Trump’s account, which had earlier appeared to be suspended, soon afterward resurfaced on the platform with all of his prior tweets—more than 59,000 of them—in tact. At least initially, his supporters had vanished, but he swiftly started to win them back. However, as of late Saturday, there have been no new tweets from the account.

Less than a month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter and four days after Trump declared his campaign for the 2024 presidential election, Musk restored the account.

But why was Trump even banned?

It was the US Capitol Hill insurrection.

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race, a crowd of his supporters attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. They attempted to keep Trump in office by obstructing the joint session of Congress from officially certifying Joe Biden’s victory by calculating the electoral college votes. The attack, according to the House Select Committee looking into the incident, was the capstone of Trump’s seven-part strategy to rig the election.

Five people passed away either either before, during, or after the event. One was shot by Capitol Police, another passed away from a drug overdose, and the remaining three perished from what was determined as natural causes.

One thirty-eight police officers were among the many individuals hurt. Within seven months, four of the officers who reacted to the incident died by suicide. The assailants had cost more than $2.7 million in damages. 

Democratic US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York responded to Musk’s poll on Trump by tweeting video of the Jan. 6 insurrection. She tweeted that when Trump was last on Twitter, it “was used to incite an insurrection, multiple people died, the Vice President of the United States was nearly assassinated, and hundreds were injured but I guess that’s not enough for you to answer the question. Twitter poll it is.”

Trump lost his access to Twitter two days after his supporters stormed the Capitol, soon after the former president had exhorted them to “fight like hell.” Twitter dropped his account after Trump wrote a pair of tweets that the company said cast further doubts on the legitimacy of the presidential election and raised risks for the Biden presidential inauguration.

After the January 6 attack, Trump was also kicked off Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta Platforms, and Snapchat. His ability to post videos to his YouTube channel was also suspended. Facebook is set to reconsider Trump’s suspension in January.

Throughout his tenure as president, Trump’s use of social media posed a significant challenge to major social media platforms that sought to balance the public’s interest in hearing from public officials with worries about misinformation, bigotry, harassment and incitement of violence.

But in a speech at an auto conference in May, Musk asserted that Twitter’s ban of Trump was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”

Will Trump Actually Return?

Trump may or may not come back to Twitter. The former US president, who was an unstoppable tweeter prior to his suspension, has previously claimed that he would not return even if his account was reactivated. He has been relying on Truth Social, a far more modest social media platform that he started after being banned from Twitter.

And on Saturday, Trump stated in a video address to a gathering of Republican Jews in Las Vegas that he was aware of Musk’s poll but that he observed “a lot of problems at Twitter.”

“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,” Trump said, according to a report by Associated Press. “It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.

“And frankly, you better hope that a certain person wins the election in 2024,” he said during the address.

What’s Truth Social?

Truth Social was developed by Trump Media & Technology Group, an American media and technology firm established in October 2021 by Donald Trump. Truth Social is also known by its stylised name, TRUTH Social. In an effort to offer a “uncensored” alternative to Twitter and Facebook, the site has been referred to as a competitor in the alt-tech space alongside Parler and Gab.

Currently, the site is only available to US users.

According to reports, it was ranked number 25 in the Apple App Store’s social networking app rankings as of August 29, 2022, while SimilarWeb put its website at number 133 in the “News & Media Publishers” category, almost edging Parler out at number 873.

Truth Social was reportedly having financial and regulatory problems starting in the middle of 2022. It’s app was first blocked from Google Play due to violations of the company’s policy against violent threats and incitement, but in October 2022 it was allowed after pledging to uphold the incitement regulations.

Can Truth Social Replace Twitter?

It’s a far-held competition according to ratings. However, with Musk’s new ever-meandering policies and Trump’s endorsement of his platform (set to get the spotlight) with his 2024 bid, Truth Social may definitely set the standard among its contemporaries.

A report by Verge when the platform was launched in February this year argued that Trump’s Truth Social was not entirely aimed at dislodging Big Tech monopolies such as Twitter. Instead of only competing with Facebook and Twitter for market share, Truth was portrayed as a “opportunity to galvanise / unify the fractured ‘non-Big Tech’ universe” in a slide deck delivered to investors in November, the report stated.

A successful platform for rival businesses in the ecosystem of alternative social media may not be one that supplants Twitter but rather establishes the bar for the community that opposes it, the report argues. Digital media expert Jamie Cohen told the Verge, “What Truth, or Gettr, might do is create a pretext for the rules on this side of the internet, as opposed to the opposite posture, which is pushing back on the rules set by the dominating platforms.”

This, the report stated, explained why the newest generation of right-leaning platforms doesn’t appear overly concerned with internal rivalry. Kaelan Dorr, Gettr’s head of marketing and international outreach, responded to a query about Truth as a rival at Turning Point USA’s Americafest conference in December. This was particularly pertinent given that Jason Miller, the platform’s CEO, previously oversaw Trump’s presidential campaigns. “The more the merrier, right?,” Added Dorr. “There’s absolutely a world in which we can all coexist. It shouldn’t be that there’s only one warrior who’s going to stand up against this behemoth that is Big Tech,” Dorr had said.

The 2024 Bid and How this Makes a Difference

All things considered, the Twitter-ban lift is good news for Trump, who wants to ‘Make America Great Again’, again. Trump put good money into his Republican choice of candidates during the mid-term polls. While it did not exactly guarantee him the result he wanted, Trump certainly reflected his serious intentions into winning the top American post again.

Trump is launching his campaign amid a flurry of criminal investigations, including several that could result in indictments. They include the FBI’s investigation into dozens of documents with classified markings seized from Mar-a-Lago, as well as ongoing state and federal inquiries into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Read more on this

Associated Press quoted people close to Trump as saying that he is eager to return to politics and try to halt the rise of other potential challengers. Aides have spent the last months preparing paperwork, identifying potential staff, and sketching out the contours of a campaign modelled after his 2016 campaign, when a small clutch of aides zipping between rallies on his private jet defied the odds and defeated far better-funded and more experienced rivals by tapping into deep political fault lines and using shocking statements to drive relentless media attention.

But Trump enters the race at a politically vulnerable time. He hoped to launch his campaign in the aftermath of the GOP’s resounding midterm victories, which were fueled by candidates he supported during this year’s primaries. Instead, many of those candidates lost, allowing Democrats to keep the Senate and leaving the GOP with only a sliver of a House majority.

Far from being the undisputed party leader, Trump is now facing criticism from some of his own supporters, who say it’s time for Republicans to look forward, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emerging as an early favourite for the White House.

Trump continues to be the most potent influence in his party despite Republican setbacks. He has routinely outperformed his fellow Republican candidates by significant margins in fictitious head-to-head competitions. He is his party’s top fundraiser, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and draws sizable audiences to his rallies even when he is not in office.

With inputs from the Associated Press

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