Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would allow former President Donald Trump back on Twitter if the Tesla CEO follows through with his plan to buy the social media company. Trump was permanently banned from the social media site three days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol because of “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
In an exclusive interview with Financial Times at Future of the Car conference on Tuesday, Musk was asked about Trump’s potential return to Twitter. Rather than immediately answering directly, Musk said that he believes permanent bans on Twitter should be “extremely rare” and reserved for “bots, or spam/scam accounts.”
“I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said. “I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
Musk reached a deal at the end of April to buy Twitter for $44 billion, saying after the deal was announced that he plans to ensure that the platform is dedicated to free speech.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said in a statement.
