Fact Check

Did Musk Reinstate Trump on Twitter in April 2022?

At the time, the former president was still banned from several social media sites.

by Dan Evon, Published April 22, 2022 Updated Nov. 20, 2022


Person, Human, Audience

Image courtesy of White House / Flickr


Claim:
Twitter's ban on former U.S. President Donald Trump was reversed in April 2022 by Elon Musk.
Rating:
False

About this rating


In April 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became Twitter's largest individual shareholder and put a proposal together to purchase the social media company. While Musk's takeover of Twitter was not yet successful, some social media users started to imagine what Twitter would look like if Musk truly had control of Twitter. One such fantasy involved bringing back former U.S. President Donald Trump, who was permanently banned from the service "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6:

This wa not a genuine tweet from Trump.

The @realDonaldTrump Twitter account was still unavailable on the social media network as of this writing. When we attempted to access this page, we were greeted with a blank account and a message stating that the account was suspended for violating Twitter's rules.

In addition to the continued absence of a @realDonaldTrump account, this rumor was debunked by the fact that Musk had not yet been successful in his bid to take control of Twitter. In other words, Musk didn't yet have the authority to reinstate Trump's account.


By Dan Evon

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.


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