(FiveNation.com)- Last week on Twitter, Elon Musk offered some bipartisan criticism of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
In a tweet on Thursday, Musk suggested that Republicans should run a “less divisive candidate” in 2024 rather than Donald Trump. But Musk reiterated that Trump’s Twitter account should be restored.
In a later tweet, Musk described what he believed was Joe Biden’s biggest mistake. Biden, Musk explained, mistakenly thought he was elected president to “transform the country,” when in reality, people “just wanted less drama.”
Musk has previously said that Twitter permanently suspending Trump was a mistake. During a conference last week, the Tesla CEO said banning Trump alienated a large segment of the country while failing to prevent him from “having a voice.”
At the same time, Musk reiterated that he doesn’t believe people should be permitted to say things that are “illegal or destructive to the world.” But rather than a permanent ban, Musk said he supports temporary suspensions or making a “particular tweet” “invisible or have very little traction.”
Musk said at the conference that permanent bans “should be extremely rare,” being used only against bot or spam accounts.
Last week, Musk announced that the $44 billion deal with Twitter has been put on hold pending a review of the number of bot accounts on the platform. While Musk maintained that he is “still committed” to the acquisition, he wants to make certain that bot accounts represent less than 5 percent of Twitter’s total users.
For some time, Twitter has faced criticism for not doing enough to rein in automated, fake accounts on its platform. In a filing from April, the company estimated that in the first quarter of 2022, less than 5 percent of its accounts are fake.
The news that the deal was on hold sent Twitter’s share price plunging by 10 percent in morning trading with some traders wondering if Musk’s review of spam accounts is a pretext to get out of the deal.
