Elon Musk says he would reverse Donald Trump’s Twitter ban

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former US president Donald Trump.

Speaking at the Future of the Car conference hosted by the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday, he said it was “a morally bad decision to be clear and foolish in the extreme” to ban the Republican president from Twitter.

Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” recently inked a $44 billion (€41 billion) deal to acquire the social media platform.

The suspension of Trump’s account, which had more than 88 million followers, silenced his primary megaphone days before the end of his term and follows years of debate about how social media companies should moderate the accounts of powerful global leaders.

Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter shortly after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Twitter cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” in its decision.

The decision amplified his views among people on the political right, Musk said, calling the ban “morally wrong and flat-out stupid”.

Trump previously told Fox News that he would not return to Twitter even if Musk purchases the platform and reinstates his account, and said he would use his own social media app called Truth Social, which launched on the Apple app store in late February but was glitchy until more recently when it began letting more users in.