Elon Musk restores Trump's Twitter account

Twitter boss Elon Musk has restored Donald Trump’s account on Twitter, nearly two years after the former US president was banned from the social media platform for inciting violence.

Trump’s account reappeared on Twitter on Saturday after Musk ran a poll on the social media site that showed narrow support for allowing Trump to return.

More than 15 million people voted in the poll asking whether Trump’s account should be reinstated, with a slim majority of 51.8% voting in favour.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Elon Musk tweeted. But Donald Trump said earlier on Saturday that he had no interest in returning to Twitter.

“I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president said via video when asked whether he planned to return to Twitter by a panel at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting.

Trump said he would stick with his new platform Truth Social, the app developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) start-up, which he said had better user engagement than Twitter and was doing “phenomenally well”.

Trump, who on Tuesday launched a bid to regain the White House in 2024, also praised Musk and said he had always liked him.

But the former president also said Twitter suffered from bots, fake accounts and that the problems it faced were “incredible”.

Musk first said in May he planned to reverse the ban on Trump, and the timing of any return by the former president was closely watched — and feared — by many of Twitter’s advertisers.

Musk has since sought to reassure users and advertisers that such a decision would be made with consideration by a content moderation council composed of people with “widely diverse viewpoints”, and no account reinstatements would happen before the council convened.

He also said Twitter would not reinstate any banned users until there was a “clear process for doing so”.