Donald Trump had his Twitter account reactivated by Elon Musk over the weekend after the social media platform’s desperately unfunny CEO conducted a poll. “Reinstate former President Trump,” Musk tweeted, along with two options: Yes or No. 51.8 percent of people and/or bots voted yes, and now he’s back on Twitter for the first time since being suspended following MAGA riot at the Capitol building in January 2021. Trump hasn’t tweeted any new thoughts on Diet Coke yet, though, and he might not for awhile.
Truth Social is currently the exclusive home of Trump’s sh*tposts, and if he leaves, he’s worried the right-wing Twitter will financially collapse. There are also some potential legal complications, as reported by Semafor’s Shelby Talcott:
Trump has been working on a merger deal between the platform, which is privately owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, and Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company that would take Trump’s business public, making it accountable to investors… If Trump repeatedly signals in public before a merger that he’s never joining Twitter, then closes a SPAC deal and reneges, some shareholders could decide they were misled.
“If it’s going to look, later on, that he never had that intention [of remaining off Twitter], but he just wanted to convince people that they should go ahead and close [the SPAC deal], that’s kind of a textbook securities fraud lawsuit,” Columbia Law School Eric Talley explained. There’s also the matter of Trump agreeing to “make his posts exclusively available on Truth Social for eight hours before he could share them elsewhere,” according to the Washington Post. There are exceptions for “political messaging, political fundraising, or get-out-the-vote efforts,” however, so it sounds like he’s welcome to tweet about 2024. But relationship advice for Robert Pattinson? That might be legally off limits.
Meanwhile, here’s a 51-year-old’s very normal reaction to Trump being on Twitter again.
And lead us not into temptation … pic.twitter.com/8qNOXzwXS9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2022
Cool.
(Via Mediaite, Semafor, and the Washington Post)