Donald Trump says Elon Musk will not buy Twitter at “such a ridiculous price” after the billionaire announced he had paused his $44bn purchase of the platform.
The Tesla boss says he is “still committed” to buying Twitter but that the deal is on hold until he has gathered more information about the spam and fake accounts on the platform.
Mr Musk has vowed to let Mr Trump back onto the platform once he has taken control of it, but the one-term president cast doubt on that ever happening in a post on his own Truth Social platform.
“There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on BOTS or Spam Accounts,” Mr Trump wrote.
“Fake anyone? “By the time you get rid of them, if that can even be done, what do you have? Not much?”
And he added: “If it weren’t for the ridiculous Billion Dollar breakup fee, Elon would have already been long gone.”
Mr Trump was banned by Twitter in the wake of his supporters violently attacking the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
The world’s richest person said on Tuesday at the Financial Times’s “Future of the Car” event that Twitter’s ban of Mr Trump was “a mistake” that he would overturn.
“It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” said Mr Musk.
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Mr Musk insists he is buying Twitter to protect free speech, but the company’s stock price is now well below the $54.20 per share in cash that the world’s richest person offered last month.
As of Friday morning Twitter’s share price had dropped to $41.52.
Twitter’s shareholders still need to approve the purchase, and federal anti-trust regulators are likely to take a look at the deal because of its size, but are unlikely to sue to block it, former officials told The New York Times.
