Trump Reveals His Stance on Returning to Twitter After Musk’s Bid Prevails

Then-President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One en route to Ohio on the White House South Lawn in Washington on Aug. 1, 2019. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump, banned from Twitter, said he will not return to the platform even after businessman Elon Musk takes over.

“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, announced April 25 on Twitter that he plans to buy the California-based company for about $44 billion.

Musk pledged to make the platform better by respecting free speech and rolling out new features.

Twitter has increasingly cracked down on users, particularly conservatives, in recent years, and banned Trump while he was still president in 2021.

At the time, Twitter executives said Trump’s posts were inciting violence. Trump had called for peace at the U.S. Capitol and for people who were there carrying out violence to leave but also said his supporters were “very special.”

Facebook also banned Trump. Facebook put the ban at two years after its independent court ruled describing the suspension as “indefinite” was not permissible.

Twitter also banned some Trump administration officials, including former trade adviser Peter Navarro.

Trump’s rival company, Truth Social, started accepting signups in February.

Truth switched to Rumble’s cloud this month in a move the company said would enable it to “scale significantly” after users reported spending weeks on a waitlist.

Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Truth’s CEO, said recently that beta testing of the platform was completed and more users would be able to use the platform in the coming days.

A review on Monday showed the platform was working.

However, the platform is only available for iPhone users to download on Apple’s app store. Prospective users are told on Truth’s website that an app for Google’s store is “coming soon.”

Trump has still not started using his own service besides posting in February that people should “get ready” and “your favorite president will see you soon!”

Trump told Fox he plans to start posting on Truth over the next week.

“We’re taking in millions of people, and what we’re finding is that the response on Truth is much better than being on Twitter,” Trump said, claiming there was “no interaction” on Twitter before he was removed because of the censorship of conservatives. “The interaction on Truth has been amazing,” he added.

Nunes said on Fox News on Monday that Truth is recording “more engagement” than Twitter is, though it’s unclear what measure he was citing.

Truth, he added, is “taking the best of all these social media platforms, putting them to one, inviting people on and not censoring them.”