Elon Musk said he would restore former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account after an online poll

Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, announced that he will restore former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account on Saturday.

Musk conducted a straw poll on the social media platform starting late Friday, asking his followers to vote on whether to reinstate former US President Donald Trump’s account. Trump on the platform or not. The poll ran for twenty-four hours.

At the end, Musk wrote in a tweet, “Everyone has spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” The following phrase means “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

Trump’s account still appears to be active on Twitter, but the former president didn’t make any new posts on the social media platform shortly after Musk lifted the ban.

Under previous ownership, Twitter issued a permanent ban on President Donald Trump’s account in January 2021.

The former president’s account was suspended by Twitter for the first time after the January 6, 2021 uprising at the US Capitol, where his supporters rioted and disrupted legislators who were officially in office. counting the votes of the Electoral College.

At the time, Twitter said in a tweet it had made the decision “due to the risk of inciting further violence.”

After Trump was banned from using Twitter and other social platforms including Facebook, he founded a social media company of his own.

For his part, Trump said earlier this year that he won’t come back to the social media platform even as Musk reverses the ban.

Former president told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in April after news of the deal broke that although he liked Musk, he was “disappointed by the way Twitter has treated me. I won’t be going back to Twitter.”

Musk heralded the decision to welcome Trump back to the platform back in May, right after he first agreed to buy the company. At FT Live’s Future of the Car conference, Musk said he “will reverse the ban permanently” if the deal goes through.

“Permanent bans would be extremely rare and are really exclusive to bots or scam accounts… I don’t think it’s right to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said at the time. “I think it was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and ultimately didn’t lead to Donald Trump having no voice.”

The move to bring Trump back to Twitter comes day after the former president announced his third campaign for the White House. Trump is currently under federal investigation for his handling of classified documents and his role in the massive effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s account reactivation comes weeks before the December final election between Senator Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Republican candidate Herschel Walker. Trump’s Twitter activity could influence the race.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson tweeted, “Georgia is here,” in response to the news. Erickson seems to suggest that Trump will spoil Walker’s chances with his potential tweets.

Trump welcomed the new Twitter Musk’s ownership. “I’m so glad Twitter is now in the hands of sane people and will no longer be run by lunatics and radical lunatics who truly hate our country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. himself in October. Truth Social is a Twitter-like platform operated by Trump Media & Technology Group.

On October 28, when Musk took the helm of Twitter, he wrote on the platform that, “Twitter will form a content moderation board with widely diverse views. There will be no critical decisions. any content or account recovery prior to convening by that board.”

Musk has yet to say whether he has set up a content moderation committee or who is participating in it.

The NAACP was one of the first civil rights groups to condemn Musk for allowing Trump to return to the platform. Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, has urged any companies still working with Twitter to pause advertising following the decision to reinstate Trump.

“Any advertiser still sponsoring Twitter should immediately suspend all advertising,” Johnson said in a statement to CNBC. “If Elon Musk continues to run Twitter like this, using trash polls that are not representative of the American people and the needs of our democracy, God help us all,” he said. more.

Johnson is among civil rights leaders recently met with Musk and urged him not to allow the return of many users who have been banned from the platform.

Democratic leaders have been concerned for months that Musk will allow Trump to return to Twitter.

Members of President Joe Biden’s internal team and party strategists worry that disinformation will increase on Twitter under Musk’s leadership and ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which could Could pit Biden against the former president in a rematch, CNBC before report.

A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment.