Elon Musk, left, and Wendell P. Weeks, center, listen to President Donald Trump as he meets with business leaders at the White House on Monday January 23, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Matt McClain | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Twitter’s most famous banned user, former President Donald Trump, applauded the platform’s new ownership under billionaire Elon Musk, who previously said he doesn’t believe in permanent suspensions.
“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account, a Twitter-like platform run by the Trump Media & Technology Group.
The former president did not address the possibility of a return to the platform. Musk has said he would lift Trump’s permanent suspension, which Twitter installed in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after its leadership feared further violence could stem from his tweets. Musk said he favors more temporary measures.
Trump, for his part, said months ago that he would not return to the platform even if Musk reversed the ban. He began his message Friday by touting Truth Social and claiming without evidence or specifics that the platform “had bigger numbers” last week “than all other platforms, including TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest.”
“Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly,” Trump wrote on Friday. “It will be much smaller, but better.”
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank check company set to take Trump Media and Technology Group and its Truth Social platform public, slipped Friday.
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