OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was restored over the weekend by new CEO Elon Musk, and already it is garnering a lot of attention. After Musk’s engineering team brought the former president’s account back online, it populated with all of his old tweets and a majority of his followers.
Trump’s final tweet, posted on Jan. 8, 2021, noted he was going to avoid going to then-President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021
While Trump has not posted a brand-new tweet to his account, his last one garnered several thousand new responses, with some users expressing joy that he was “back.”
HES BACK BOYS!
— aka (@akafacehots) November 20, 2022
Welcome back sir 🫡🫡🫡🫡
— Joshua Medeiros (@JoshMedeirosTX) November 20, 2022
.🚨OhMyLord 🙏 @realDonaldTrump
You are back. We waited too long for you to come back.
History is in the making.Thank you @elonmusk 🙏
You are the best.
Both of you work together will save our nation.
We can’t be happier!GodBlessAmerica✝️☦️🛐
~ @WenMaMa2 #T4MAGA2 #A11192 pic.twitter.com/V0VvFzhWHF— WenMaMa2 🤔🧐🕵️♀️ (@WenMaMa2) November 20, 2022
For his part, Trump has said he isn’t interested in coming back to Twitter, choosing instead to remain on his Truth Social platform instead.
“Truth Social and Truth Social is through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well,” Trump said during a virtual appearance on Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition, which was held in Las Vegas.
“The press hates to talk about it, but it’s doing phenomenally well. I think engagement is much better than is with Twitter and it’s taking care of voices that really want to be taken care of, and really smart voices, brilliant voices. Voices that in many cases are both sides,” Trump continued.
“But I can tell you, there’s a lot of voice for Israel lot of power for Israel in Truth Social, so Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong and I’ll be staying there, but I heard we’re getting a big vote to go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see a reason for it,” the former president said.
Musk reinstated Trump’s account on Saturday after the former president won a poll on the app with around 52 percent of the vote.
“Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei (which in Latin means the voice of the people (is) the voice of God),” he said.
As of this writing, the former president’s account is officially back on Twitter and can be found here.
On Friday, Musk announced he had reinstated three people who had previously been banned, including one after he took over — Kathie Griffin, Dr. Jorden Peterson, and The Babylon Bee satire news site.
Following Trump’s reinstatement, liberals on the platform reacted negatively.
“Elon Musk is letting a man who led a violent Insurrection to overthrow the United States Government back on this platform. Letting the Lies and Disinformation continue to poison the American bloodstream,” actor and producer Rob Reiner noted.
Musk said in May that he would reverse Twitter’s permanent ban on Trump if his $44 billion bid to buy the social media company were successful, as it was.
Musk told the Financial Times that the ban “was morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”
The previous month, Trump said he “probably” would not return to Twitter if Musk reinstated his account.
In an interview with Sirius XM’s Americano Media, Trump said he “probably wouldn’t have any interest” in returning to the platform, where he had almost 90 million followers.
“You know, Twitter has become very boring. They’ve gotten rid of a lot of their good voices … a lot of their conservative voices,” Trump said.
Though Musk has been taking heat about mass layoffs and an employee exodus at the company, at the time he put new and current Twitter employees on notice about getting ready to work.
“Work ethic expectations would be extreme, but much less than I demand of myself,” the billionaire said in a tweet.
