Elon Musk Says He Would End Twitter’s Ban On Donald Trump

Ted Johnson
·3 min read
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Elon Musk confirmed what has been speculated since he reached a deal to buy out Twitter: He’d allow Donald Trump to return to the platform.

“I think it was a morally bad decision, to be clear, and foolish in the extreme,” Musk said Tuesday at the Financial Times‘ Future of the Car conference.

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Musk cautioned that his proposed takeover of Twitter — in which he would take the company private — was still “not a done deal” and that in the “best case scenario” the transaction would be completed in two or three months.

But he said that he had talked to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and they were in agreement that permanent Twitter suspensions should be reserved for bots or spam accounts.

“It was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said. “I think that was a mistake. It alienated a large part of the country.”

Rather than keep Trump from having a voice, he said, a permanent suspension would only amplify his voice on the right.

Trump has said that he would not return to Twitter but would maintain a presence on his own social media platform, Truth Social. But there’s a lot of doubt that he would stick to that, given the much larger reach of the social media platform, and especially if he decides to run for president again in 2024.

Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in the aftermath of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The company said that it was due to “the risk of further incitement of violence,” as they outlined numerous instances where Trump violated its terms of service.

Last month, Twitter’s board agreed to Musk’s offer to purchase the company for around $44 billion. Musk has been critical of the company’s content moderation decisions are too restrictive, which led to immediate speculation that he would restore Trump’s account and that of other sidelined figures.

At the Financial Times event, Musk did raise the possibility of still temporarily suspending accounts or reducing their reach if they say something illegal of that is “destructive to the world.” But he said that the solution should not be permanent bans, which can “fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as accounts where everyone can voice their opinion.”

Musk’s comments signal a more permissive attitude toward what gets posted on Twitter, although he suggested that the platform would still be making thorny content moderation decisions that include sanctions against users.

“If there are tweets that are wrong … and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a temporary suspension is appropriate, but not a permanent ban,” Musk said.

At the daily briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Musk’s comment.

“It’s a decision by a private company to make on who will and who will not be allowed on their platforms. What I will say, broadly speaking, is that our effort is to of course, make sure that freedom of speech is protected across the country but that also these platforms are not used as forums for disinformation. And we have seen a history of that, not just on Twitter but also on Facebook. The president believes that there is more that needs to be done in reforming Section 230, and there is a lot of bipartisan interest in that, so this might be a reminder of the urgency in doing that.”

Section 230 is the portion of a 1996 law that gives internet companies immunity from liability over the third-party content posted on their platforms, along with protections for their content moderation decisions.

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