Elon Musk clarifies that Donald Trump and other banned accounts won't be allowed back on Twitter before the midterm elections, if at all

• Elon Musk said banned Twitter accounts will not be allowed back for "at least a few more weeks."
• This means that former president Donald Trump will not be on Twitter before the midterm elections.

Elon Musk's tweet about banned Twitter accounts not being allowed back on the platform for "at least a few more weeks," means Donald Trump won't be back before the midterm elections.

Musk tweeted that users who were "de-platformed for violating Twitter rules" won't be allowed back "until we have a clear process for doing so," and also said he "talked to civil society leaders" like the presidents of the NAACP and Color of Change, about how the platform will "combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies."

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

Former president Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter after the violent attack by his supporters on the US Capitol in January 2021, "due to the risk of further incitement of violence," Twitter said in its blog.

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Twitter's new owner, Musk, previously said Trump's suspension from Twitter was a "morally bad decision" and "foolish to the extreme," and said he would reverse the ban. Trump has said that he won't return to Twitter, but many suspect that could change.

When podcast host Chris Stigall asked Trump about Twitter on Tuesday, Trump promoted Truth Social, saying he likes the way it works better.

"I don't lose anything," he said. "In other words, you know, they want to put me on very badly, they've called and they want me to go back on. But if I go on there, what would happen to Truth? I don't know...But the answer is, I'm not doing it. I won't go back on."

Trump also criticized Musk for spending "a lot of money on buying something that has tremendous, you know, numbers of fake accounts and bots and all of this stuff."

On the day Musk officially bought the social media platform, the Tesla founder tweeted that the company "will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints," adding that "no major decisions" or reinstatements of banned accounts will happen before the council is made.

In this Twitter thread about not allowing banned accounts back on Twitter for weeks, he wrote that the content moderation council "will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence."

On Tuesday, 40 justice organizations and media watchdog groups sent a letter to Twitter's top advertisers asking them to "publicly commit" that they would stop advertising on Twitter if Musk does "undermine brand safety and community standards including gutting content moderation."

During Trump's podcast interview, he claimed that he gets a "better response" from Truth Social than when he was on Twitter, even though he was "one of the top couple of people" with "100 million" followers. Trump's Twitter handle had more than 88 million followers at the time of the ban. Socialtracker lists @BarackObama as the top Twitter account, with more than 133 million followers.

Trump also claimed he had 270 million total followers, "including Facebook and everything else." Trump had 35 million followers on Facebook, which suspended him but could lift the suspension as soon as January.

Trump made an unspecific reference to a recent story that said banning him was "one of the worst decisions" made by the technology industry "because when they got me off, they say it became boring."

Trump said Truth Social is smarter, and friendlier but also can be "very nasty, you know — especially if they get against you a little bit. Even your own people, if they disagree with something you did, they get nasty. We've got some smart ones."

But he said the app's success comes despite the press and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "They do anything they can to stop Trump," he said. "They do anything they can to stop Truth. It's crazy what these people do. These are maniacs."