See no reason to return, Trump says after Twitter reinstates his account
After Twitter owner Elon Musk announced he was reinstating Donald Trump’s account, the former US President stated that he had no interest in returning to Twitter. Trump’s account was back on Twitter after a slim majority voted in favour of reinstating the account of the former US President.
“I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president said via video, news agency Reuters reported.
Also read: Donald Trump’s Twitter account restored after 51.8% say ‘yes’ in polls
Trump, who recently announced his bid for the 2024 US Presidential election, said he would stick with his new platform Truth Social. Truth Social is an app developed by his Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) start-up and he claims that Truth Social has better user engagement than Twitter and was doing ‘phenomally well’, reported Reuters.
Online poll
Musk had run an online poll asking whether Trump’s account should be reinstated on Twitter. In the poll that received 15,085,458 votes, 51.8 per cent voted yes and 48.2 per cent were against reinstating the former US President’s Twitter account.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God),” Musk tweeted on Saturday.
Also read: Donald Trump asks Florida judge to force Twitter to restore his account
Trump’s Twitter account appeared to be back as of Saturday evening and the last tweet was dated January 8, 2021 in which Trump had said, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
At the time when Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated, it showed that he had one million followers and that number quickly grew to 2.1 million in just under 30 minutes.
Suspended since January 2021
Trump was permanently suspended from the social media site in January 2021, just days after the attempted insurrection by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol.
Twitter’s top lawyer, Indian-American Vijaya Gadde was at the forefront of the dramatic decision to suspend the former US President’s Twitter account.
Gadde had tweeted that the “account of @realDonaldTrump has been permanently suspended from Twitter due to the risk of further violence. We’ve also published our policy enforcement analysis – you can read more about our decision here,” linking to a Twitter blogpost about the company’s decision to permanently suspend Trump’s Twitter account through which he communicated to his more than 88 million followers.
Also read: Donald Trump is keen on running for something… but for what?
Changes after Musk
Gadde, CEO Parag Agrawal, legal executive Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett were among the top Twitter executives fired by Musk immediately after he took control of the social media company following a $44-billion acquisition.
Trump had earlier heaped praises on Elon Musk and said he had always liked him. But he also pointed out that Twitter suffered from bots, fake accounts and that the problems it faced were ‘incredible’.
(With inputs from agencies)
