Amidst renewed plans to buy Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired a shot at Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, calling it a “rightwing echo chamber” in an interview with Financial Times.
“It might as well be called Trumpet,” Musk said.
Musk said that Truth Social is indicative of social media splintering into various politically charged silos. His comments echo previous ones he made this past summer opposing Twitter’s decision to ban Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on the grounds that his tweets incited violence.
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. 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 said at the time.
Musk has spent the past few months in a legal battle with Twitter after backing out of plans to acquire the social media platform over claims that Twitter was not doing enough to delete bot accounts on the site. Now, less than two weeks before Musk and Twitter were set to go to trial over the reneged deal, Musk is offering once again to buy the site for $44 billion, the same proposed price initially offered back in April.
“I’m not doing Twitter for the money. It’s not like I’m trying to buy some yacht and I can’t afford it,” Musk told the Financial Times. “I don’t own any boats. But I think it’s important that people have a maximally trusted and inclusive means of exchanging ideas and that it should be as trusted and transparent as possible.”
While a judge has postponed the trial because of the new proposal, giving Musk until Oct. 28 to complete the deal. But Twitter says they cannot trust that the billionaire’s offer is in good faith, calling Musk’s offer an “invitation to further mischief and delay” in new court filings on Thursday.
“Now, on the eve of trial, [Musk] declares [he] intend[s] to close after all. ‘Trust us,’ they say, ‘we mean it this time,’ and so they ask to be relieved from a reckoning on the merits,” the filing written by Twitter’s lawyers states.
Meanwhile, Truth Social has been having some difficulties. Last month, investors pulled $138.5 million from the blank check company linked to Trump’s social media platform, and Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was supposed to deliver $1.3 billion to help the former president take on Twitter, has changed its address to a mailbox at a UPS store.
The change of address came in the same disclosure that said investors had been pulling cash from the venture, which has generally disappointed after pulling in far fewer users than hoped.
