Elon Musk bid aside, Trump signals he has no interest returning to Twitter

As Elon Musk races toward closing a deal to buy Twitter, the platform's most famously banned icon, former President Donald Trump, is signaling he has no interest in returning even if it lifts its censorship policies.

The CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group Devin Nunes reiterated Monday the 45th president has no plan to make a triumphant return to Twitter if Musk buys it and lifts Trump's ban. Instead, Nunes said, Trump is focused on building Truth Social, his own platform.

"I can only report what he said. He said he really doesn't have an interest in going on Twitter," Nunes told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. "And my guess is that would continue to be the same."

(Musk said Monday he had reached a deal to buy Twitter.) 

Nunes' comments came two days after Trump himself hailed the rapid growth of his Truth Social platform, which Friday night ended its Beta testing period and opened its doors to millions of users after migrating to the Rumble video giant's Cloud servers.

The former president also dissed Twitter, where he once had about 100 million followers before his ban in January 2021.

"I think Truth Social is going do well. It's moving along nicely," Trump said at a rally in Delaware, Ohio, on Saturday night. "And you look at Twitter and you look at how badly it treats everybody and it's a real mess. Big Tech has banned so many Americans is nothing left to ban.

"All that's left to ban are their fake bot accounts, you know their bot accounts, a lot of phony accounts. At Truth Social we're canceling the plague of radical leftists that's destroying America."

A few days earlier, Trump told Americano Media, "I probably wouldn’t have any interest" in returning to Twitter if Musk bought it.

"Twitter’s become very boring. They’ve gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices,” the former president explained.

Nunes said the Trump team views Twitter as "nothing but a PR wire" and that Truth Social's focus is to combine the best elements of Tik-Tok, Facebook and Instagram to build a community around users.

"Where are the consumers? They're on Instagram and Tik-Tok. And as you know, as you use the platform, we have very good video, very good photos. The media that we have is extremely good on Truth Social and it's going to keep getting better.

"And that's why we're taking the best of all these social media platforms, putting them onto one, inviting people and not censoring them."