Elon Musk had more or less promised it and he has just done it: the new boss of Twitter brings Donald Trump back, ending a 22-month ban for the former Republican president.
This decision, the most sensitive since Musk finalized the acquisition of the platform on Oct. 27 for $44 billion, has been carefully prepared. The tech tycoon started by holding a poll, as he often does with important decisions he's about to make.
He organized a poll on Nov. 18 asking Twitter users to vote "Yes" or "No", whether they wanted him to reactivate Trump's account.
"Reinstate former President Trump," Musk wrote on Nov. 18.
Users had 24 hours to decide and they voted massively.
"134M people have seen this poll," Musk said before the poll ended.
More than 15 million people voted. 52% voted for the return of the former president on the microblogging website, while 48% voted against. As he had committed when organizing this poll, Musk decided to follow the result of the vote. He will therefore reactivate Trump's account.
'Trump Will Be Reinstated'
"The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated," the billionaire announced after the poll closed.
He added: "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," a Latin expression which means that the voice of the people is the voice of God.
Sometime after Musk's tweet, Donald Trump's account was visible on Twitter again. But the former president had not yet posted a message.
This return to the town square of our time, comes at a time when Donald Trump has kicked off his campaign for the 2024 presidential election. The former president announced his candidacy on Nov. 15, a week after midterm elections -- met with mixed reactions from the Republican Party.
Twitter could help him get his message across, at a time when the Republican mega donors are asking him to make way for a new generation of leaders, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
"I'd like to think that the Republican party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser," billionaire Ken Griffin said on Nov. 16 at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
The CEO of investment firm Citadel called Trump a "three-time loser" and added "I really hope that President Trump sees the writing on the wall."
Trump's daughter, Ivanka, who was a senior adviser of her father during his four years at The White House, said she would not follow him this time.
"I love my father very much. This time around I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics,” said Ivanka in a statement the night Donald Trump announced he was running in Mar-a-Lago, Fla. She did not attend the event.
It's interesting now to see how advertisers will react, because many of them had warned that if Trump returned to Twitter, they would suspend their ads.
About a dozen of advertisers asked ad-buyer GroupM for a hiatus of their ads on Twitter in the event that the former president's account was reactivated, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some of its other clients have not committed to a course of action.
“That doesn’t mean that we won’t be entertaining lots of emails and phone calls as soon as a transaction goes through,” said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships for GroupM, via the Journal. “I anticipate we’ll be busy.”
"We have two of the top five global media agencies and more than $60 billion in annual media spend," GroupM says on its Website. "We provide access and scale everywhere our clients do business. Intelligent and imaginative, we create, integrate and scale technology-enabled services with premium partners, including Google, Meta, Amazon and more."
