The world’s richest man has “got himself a mess” with a “rotten contract” to purchase Twitter that he is now trying to terminate, former US president Donald Trump said at a weekend rally as he touted his alternative Truth Social network, calling it “hot as a pistol.”
During a campaign-style rally in Anchorage, Alaska on Saturday, Trump declared that one of the “highest priorities under a Republican Congress will be to stop left-wing censorship and to restore free speech in America,” before tearing into Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
“He’s got himself a mess… So he's another bulls*** artist but he's not going to be buying [Twitter],” Trump said, after mistakenly calling the tech mogul “Leon.” Trump also recalled how Musk allegedly “told me he voted for me,” only to recently claim he is not sure he ever voted for a Republican.
The former US leader, however, acknowledged that Musk “might later” change his mind again and purchase Twitter afterall. “Who the hell knows what's going to happen?”
The billionaire and self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” Musk, first disclosed a large purchase of Twitter shares in early April, before proposing to buy the platform outright, vowing to improve it by “defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.” The company’s board at first sought to fight off the hostile takeover with “poison pills,” but eventually accepted his offer on April 25.
However, on Friday he abruptly canceled the $44 billion deal, accusing the social media company of “material breach of multiple provisions” of the merger agreement. Twitter threatened to sue Musk to compel him to go through with the deal, or pay a $1 billion break-up fee.
“He's got a pretty rotten contract. I looked at his contract, not a good contract,” Trump claimed.
Trump was banned almost simultaneously from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other mainstream social media platforms while still in office, supposedly out of concern that his tweets about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election “risk of further incitement of violence.”
“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk said shortly before the deal was first put on hold in May, calling it a “morally bad decision… and foolish in the extreme.”
Trump, however, has insisted he will not return to Twitter even if his account, which had around 89 million followers, is reinstated. He said he will instead use his own platform, Truth Social, which he once again promoted at Alaska rally.