Elon Musk finally said it out loud, telling a live audience that if his purchase of Tesla goes through, he will lift former President Donald Trump’s Twitter ban.
Despite the former president being permanently banned two days after the Jan. 6 insurgency in 2021 for promoting violence with his tweets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed Tuesday afternoon at a live automotive conference organized by the Financial Times that he would accept Donald Trump back on Twitter.
“I believe Donald Trump’s ban was incorrect. “I believe it was a mistake,” Musk remarked, adding that the perma-ban would be lifted.
“Blocking Trump from Twitter will not silence him.” It will amplify it among the right, which is why it is both morally wrong and dumb,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remarked.
Musk, a frequent (and frequently inaccurate) tweeter, qualified his remarks and Techy quoted, “I will say that I don’t own Twitter yet, so this isn’t a thing that will certainly happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?” But in my opinion, and I want to be clear, Jack Dorsey supports my opinion, we should not have perma-bans.”
Musk has claimed that his goal for the social network is to maximize “free expression,” which he believes will enrage both the far left and right
Musk went on to say that permanent bans erode trust in the network, and that if a tweet is “illegal or otherwise just damaging to the world,” he would rather give the user “a timeout, a temporary suspension, or that specific tweet should be made invisible or have very limited traction.”
He went on to say that tweets that are “wrong or harmful” could be deleted or the user’s account censored temporarily. During the interview, he didn’t say what he meant by “wrong” or “bad.”
Despite grandstanding conservatives’ expectations that Musk’s version of Twitter will be a stronghold of free expression, rolling back bans on their accounts as well, Donald Trump has publicly stated that he will continue to use his own social network, Truth Social, even if Musk returns his account.
Musk is receiving funding from a variety of sources, but he has set a limit on how much Tesla shares he would use to make the buy, and several experts have questioned if his $44 million deal will go through. The SpaceX CEO has assured investors that he will get Twitter profitable, but he has been opaque about how he plans to do so so far.