If Elon Musk has his way, ex-President Donald Trump may return to Twitter. Here's how to see the tweets that got him (not-so) permanently suspended.
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| Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto |
The words “Trump” and “tweets” are trending again, a little over a year since the twice-impeached former President received his initial (and supposedly permanent) Twitter ban. But like the monster in a slasher-film franchise, nothing on the Internet ever truly goes away. You can still read all of Trump’s supposedly deleted tweets, and he may be making more soon: Elon Musk has vowed that if his acquisition plans go through, he’ll revoke Trump’s exile, and the logorrheic ex-POTUS has indicated he’ll return.
Why was Donald Trump banned from Twitter?
Donald Trump was officially banned from Twitter in January 2021 following his involvement in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. The company said in a blog post:
It was in that moment the sun shined a little brighter, food tasted a little better, and the entire world breathed a sigh of relief. Trump filed an injunction in October 2021 to get his account reinstated, but that clearly amounted to nothing.
Where can I read Trump’s deleted tweets?
If you seek to revel in the wild world of Trump’s tweets pre-ban, I have bad and good news for you. The bad news is you can’t scroll through his Twitter feed, as that no longer exists. A previous attempt at archiving Trump’s tweets back on Twitter by the National Archives and Records Administration was squashed. The good news is that you can view his previous tweets on a few archive websites, such as:
Factba.se
Trump Twitter Archive
Pikaso.me (You’ll have to download them as screenshots)
Isn’t Trump on Truth Social?
Once he was booted from Twitter, Trump quickly realized the importance of an echo-chamber to scream into, and needed another venue to drum up support from his base of troglodytes. Enter Truth Social, Trump’s own social media platform, which went live in February of this year to a myriad of bugs and software problems.
Is Trump coming back to Twitter?
It’s complicated.
In April 2022 Elon Musk, the world’s most terminally online billionaire, announced that he was purchasing Twitter for approximately $44 billion. This immediately led to speculation that the libertarian internet troll would re-activate Trump’s account.
Trump initially said in April interview with Fox News that he had no interest in rejoining Twitter, even though he praised Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. Trump elaborated that he would instead stay on Truth Social: “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump said in the interview. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH.” He also went on to say that Twitter got “boring” as Conservative voices were thrown off the platform.
A few weeks later, Musk announced that he would undo Trump’s permanent Twitter suspension. “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake,” he said.
And then team Trump backtracked. A May 16th filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission —which is overseeing the process of taking Truth Social public— revealed that while Trump is “generally obligated” to post to TruthSocial first, he can repost those messages to “another social media site” six hours later. It also warned that Trump “may make a post from a personal account related to political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the-vote efforts on any social media site at any time.”
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