Elon Musk reinstates Donald Trump's Twitter account

Elon Musk has reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account, following the social media platform’s “permanent suspension” of the former president last year. Musk held a Twitter poll on his personal account asking whether people wanted Trump’s account to be reactivated, leading to a narrow win in favour.

Musk shared the news just now, tweeting, “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”

Musk’s last sentence translates to ‘the voice of people is the voice of god’ in Latin.

Trump has yet to tweet from his reactivated account @realdonaldtrump, with his last tweet being posted last January regarding Joe Biden’s inauguration. Prior to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the social media platform announced in a blog last January it had “permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Saying it had closely reviewed Trump’s tweets and “the context around them,” it also referenced the January 6 Capitol Riots, where extremists violently stormed the White House to protest what they believed to be a fraudulent election. It said at the time that Trump’s tweets following the riots had breached their “Glorification of Violence Policy” and decided to permanently suspend Trump on that basis.

“We made it clear going back years that [politicians’] accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement,” it wrote.

Following his initial suspension from Twitter, Trump was also suspended from Facebook and he later set up his own social media platform called Truth Social. In response to Musk’s Twitter poll, Trump said he would remain on Truth Social, adding he sees “a lot of problems at Twitter” via Bloomberg.

Musk purchased Twitter recently for $44 billion, introducing a number of controversial policies such as charging for verified accounts and reinstating suspended accounts, including right wing personality Jordan Peterson who was banned for a transphobic tweet about Elliot Page. It remains to be seen what else Musk will do, or even who he’ll welcome back to the platform.