In an interview Tuesday, Elon Musk said that should his bid to take over Twitter be successful, he would reverse former President Donald Trump's ban from the platform and reinstate his account.


What You Need To Know

  • In an interview Tuesday, Elon Musk said that should his bid to take over Twitter be successful, he would reverse former President Donald Trump's ban from the platform and reinstate his account

  • "I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said at a Financial Times conference

  • Trump said last month that while he supports Musk's takeover of Twitter, he has no plans to rejoin the platform even if his account is reinstated, opting instead to use his own platform, Truth Social

  • Trump was booted from Twitter two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot

"I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said at a Financial Times conference. “I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the county, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.

Musk called the ban "morally wrong and flat-out stupid," and claimed that Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey agrees with him.

"I do agree," Dorsey, who was CEO of Twitter at the time of Trump's ban, said in a post on Tuesday. "There are exceptions (CSE, illegal behaviour, spam or network manipulation, etc), but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don't work, which I wrote about here after the event (and called for a resilient social media protocol)."

"It was a business decision, it shouldn't have been," he said in a subsequent post. "And we should always revisit our decisions and evolve as necessary. I stated in that thread and still believe that permanent bans of individuals are directionally wrong."

"If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension — a temporary suspension — is appropriate, but not a permanent ban," he added.

Trump said last month that while he supports Musk's takeover of Twitter, he has no plans to rejoin the platform even if his account is reinstated, opting instead to use his own platform, Truth Social.

“I am not going on Twitter," Trump told Fox News. "I am going to stay on Truth. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth."

Trump was booted from Twitter two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The social media giant cited “the risk of further incitement of violence,” saying that the then-president’s tweets after the insurrection were being interpreted by some of his supporters as calls “to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021.”

Trump had 88.7 million followers on Twitter when he was suspended.

Twitter and Musk reached an agreement last month for the Tesla and SpaceX founder to buy the social media company for $44 billion and privatize it. 

Musk has said he wants to protect free speech on Twitter, which he’s described as a “digital town square.”

He said in a tweet last month that he believes speech protected under the law should be allowed on the platform.

“I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law,” Musk wrote. “If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”