Former President Donald Trump said he won’t return to Twitter despite Elon Musk reinstating his account, but it’s not because he simply doesn’t feel like it. According to the NY Post, Trump could stand to lose millions of dollars if he succumbs to temptation and resumes communicating with the masses through Twitter.
Despite Musk’s apparent attempts to entice Trump into tweeting again, Trump has insisted that he is content to stay put at his own social media platform, Truth Social, which he founded after he was banned by mainstream tech platforms last year.
Truth Social is a privately held property of Trump Media & Technology Group, which is owned by the former president.
TMTG is locked into an agreement with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), which was created to take Trump’s company public.
If Trump’s company were to go public only for him to devalue Truth Social by resuming his Twitter activities — and thus giving his tens of millions of followers a reason to abandon the fledgling social media platform and return to Musk’s outfit — shareholders could sue him, a legal expert told Semafor.
“If it’s going to look, later on, that he never had that intention [of remaining off Twitter] but he just wanted to convince people that they should go ahead and close [the SPAC deal] that’s kind of a textbook securities fraud lawsuit,” Columbia Law School professor Eric Talley told Semafor.
Trump could conceivably return to Twitter without facing any legal repercussions — but only if he gives priority to his own app.
According to an SEC filing by TMTG, Trump “is generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial and may not make the same post on another social media site for 6 hours.”
The deal with the SPAC also allows Trump to use “a personal account” to make posts “related to political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the-vote efforts on any social media site at any time.”
During a video speech to a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump said he was aware of Musk’s poll but that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter.”
“I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it,” Trump said.
“It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.
Either way, whether for legal or financial reasons, Donald Trump doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in returning to Twitter at this time. That could all change, however, once the 2024 presidential race starts to heat up and political opponents take to Twitter to promote themselves, or worse slam their number-one rival.
