(LifeSiteNews) – Former President Donald Trump says he will not return to his famous Twitter account even after Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s purchase of the beleaguered social network is complete, opting instead to stick with his own new network, Truth Social.
Twitter announced the $44 billion sale Monday, weeks after Musk, a vocal critic of speech discrimination by online communication platforms, revealed his intentions to buy the platform, eliciting a wave of hyperbolic reactions from left-wing users.
Among the questions surrounding the takeover was the possibility of restoring Trump’s account, which was a cornerstone of the president’s public image since his 2016 rise but was permanently suspended in January 2021, ostensibly because Trump supposedly “incited” the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, however, has preemptively declared the question moot. “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News Monday, referring to the social network he announced in October and launched in February. “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.”
“We’re taking in millions of people, and what we’re finding is that the response on TRUTH is much better than being on Twitter,” he continued. “Twitter has bots and fake accounts, and we are doing everything we can.”
Trump added that he does not see Musk’s Twitter as “competition for what I am doing,” calling Truth Social a “platform for my voice and for my supporters,” which he said has been “amazing” due to user “interaction.”
Truth Social got off to a rocky start due to technical issues, most notably a lengthy user waiting list, though that backlog reportedly cleared this past week after the network reached a deal to migrate to the cloud infrastructure of alternative video platform Rumble.
Still, Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and the promise of the 217 million-user platform once again becoming a fair venue for conservative speech, represents a major blow to the appeal of competitors such as Truth Social, Gab, and Parler.
Trump’s decision not to take advantage of Twitter’s audience is also counter-intuitive given his widely-assumed (but unconfirmed) intentions to run for president again in 2024, prompting speculation as to whether he truly intends to remain exclusive to Truth Social.