Donald Trump has had his Twitter account restored after Elon Musk bought out the company, but it remains unclear if he will use the account or not. AP. Trump was banned after January 6th, a decision that Elon Musk said was a "morally bad decision" and "foolish to the extreme". Musk put the issue up to a vote on Twitter with 51.8 percent of users who voted saying Trump should be reinstated. Trump's account is currently back, though his follower account was reset to zero. It is unclear if Trump will use the account as he has his own social media site, Truth Social, and he has said that he will continue to post there.
The people have spoken.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022
Trump will be reinstated.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv
My Comment:
I wasn't going to write this up since everyone in the world has talked about it already and I'm a little late, but there wasn't anything else that I saw that was worth writing about. It is a significant event and a historical one, but again, I am late on writing about it.
Of course, Donald Trump never should have been banned in the first place. The media has created a false narrative that Trump was trying to "incite an insurrection" and other such nonsense. With Trump's account restored we can see he was calling for calm and nothing else. The decision to ban trump was a political one, full stop, and it prevented him from advocating for his position in the wake of the most dysfunctional and corrupt election in recent US history.
It is very unclear if Trump will come back to Twitter or not. He does have his own thing going on via Truth Social now and if he does return to Twitter I think that website is probably done. Truth Social doesn't really do anything special, it just has the advantage of having Donald Trump there exclusively. Given how much money Trump has invested into Truth Social, it would be a bad financial move for him to do so.
Of course, there is a damn good reason for Trump to come back to Twitter. If he does he stands a better chance of getting back into office in 2024. Trump's mastery of his Twitter account is how he won in 2016 and if he can back into form he may be able to pull it off again. He does still have an impact on things with Truth Social but his reach would be greatly expanded if he was on Twitter.
I am sure that Elon Musk is hoping that Trump will come back. Trump is obviously a huge draw and having him come back would more than make up for the few people that actually left after Musk took over. It would also increase engagement and advertising rates so Musk stands to make a bit of money if Trump comes back.
As for Trump's account, it appears to be dormant at the moment. The follower account is unstable as well, probably due to millions of people trying to follow him all at once. I tired myself and it didn't work, so I am guessing it will take some time to get all the kinks out.
If nothing else this is a huge win for future historians. Trump was a major power user and you can't understand the history of Twitter, and even the history of America, without access to Donald Trump's tweets. Like I said before, he would not have been elected in 2016 without his mastery of social media and people in the future will want to know what he had said. Those tweets were lost to the aether for a long time, but now they are back and I hope like hell people are archiving them...
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