Elon Musk’s renewed efforts to buy Twitter could pave the way for President Donald Trump‘s return to the platform that permanently banned him a year earlier.
If Musk follows through on the deal — and if he stands by his prior plan to reverse Trump’s ban — the Republican ex-president could potentially resume tweeting in time to make an impact on the November midterm elections.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in April but then tried to scrap the deal, this week signaled through a regulatory filing that he once again wants to proceed with the original transaction. News of the deal, which is still not finalized, sent Twitter’s stock soaring.
Before getting cold feet on the deal over the summer, Musk said he planned to lift Trump’s Twitter ban if he took over the company. “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said in May.
Twitter had shut down Trump’s account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters, spurred by his false claims of a rigged election, stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee their chambers for safety.
Trump, who now posts on a similar platform he backed called Truth Social, has said he won’t return to Twitter even if he is allowed back on. “I was disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter. I won’t be going back on Twitter,” Trump told CNBC in April.
But with Musk’s $44 billion Twitter buyout now back on the table, some believe Trump won’t be able to resist the allure of regaining an account that boasted nearly 90 million followers at its peak.
“Of course he will” return to Twitter if he can, Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella said of Trump.
The former president is “a Twitter addict” who “loves the instant gratification” it offers, Bardella said, while noting that Truth Social has so far failed to garner a similar level of user engagement.
Trump’s Truth Social account, created in February, currently has 4.15 million followers.
Twitter’s suspension of Trump “took away his megaphone,” said Jonathan Nagler, co-director of NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics and a professor of politics. The tech giant’s move “lessened his ability to push bogus election fraud claims” and “incite action against election officials,” he said.
“Truth Social, as far as anyone can tell, has had nowhere near the impact or reach that his Twitter account has had,” Nagler said.
Spokespeople for Trump, Musk, Twitter and Trump’s company behind Truth Social did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Musk has not yet reiterated that he will lift Trump’s Twitter ban if the latest buyout plans come to fruition. With sources telling CNBC that a deal could happen as soon as Friday, it’s possible Trump could be allowed to resume tweeting before the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
If so, Trump’s frequent musings about the midterms could soon be back on Twitter, reaching an audience that was once more than 20 times the size of his Truth Social following.
What’s more, Twitter is used much more heavily by most media organizations and politicians, both in the U.S. and around the world. But Nagler warned Trump may not want to be “100% beholden to Musk, the world’s richest man,” as his social media enabler.
“Elon Musk could change his mind as well,” Nagler said. “We’re trying to predict the behavior of two people, both of who seem quite agile in their ability to shift what they plan to do.”
Still, Nagler said, Trump is likely to rejoin Twitter if given a chance. “That would be my guess,” he said. “At the end of the day, Trump likes to be heard … my guess is that would win out.”
Some of Trump’s conservative fans cheered the news that Musk was once again pushing to buy Twitter. But not everyone is so sure it will benefit his allies.
“I think it’s going to cut both ways,” Nagler said. Trump’s tweets could possibly mobilize parts of his base to turn out to the polls, but “his increased visibility could be a reminder to moderates of why they do not want Republicans in office,” the professor said.
Bardella argued that Republican candidates have struggled “every time that Donald Trump has been the center of attention.”
He pointed to the 2018 midterms and the more recent Georgia special elections, which led to Democrats clinching a slim Senate majority. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, meanwhile, unseated a Democrat in a blue-leaning state by keeping Trump at arm’s length during the general election, Bardella said.
“The last thing that Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy want the elections to be is a referendum on Donald Trump,” Bardella said. “Republicans have made it very clear, they want the conversation heading into the midterms to be about the economy, inflation and crime. They don’t want it to be about Donald Trump.”
Musk’s comments about the need for Twitter to be “politically neutral,” and his recently revealed correspondence with people pushing him to fight “woke-ism” and censorship on the platform, could also indicate how the site might change the way it previously handled Trump’s tweets.
During the 2020 election, Twitter tried to combat misinformation by labeling certain accounts’ tweets with warnings and providing links with credible election information. Trump’s tweets were tagged multiple times, as the then-president regularly amplified a wide variety of conspiratorial claims that his reelection chances were being threatened by rampant election fraud.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits “Making Money With Charles Payne” at Fox Business Network Studios in New York on Dec. 4, 2024.
Mike Coppola | Getty Images
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s sister, Ann Altman, filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging that her brother sexually abused her regularly between the years of 1997 and 2006.
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, alleges that the abuse took place at the family’s home in Clayton, Missouri, and began when Ann, who goes by Annie, was three and Sam was 12. The filing claims that the abusive activities took place “several times per week,” beginning with oral sex and later involving penetration.
The lawsuit claims that “as a direct and proximate result of the foregoing acts of sexual assault,” the plaintiff has experienced “severe emotional distress, mental anguish, and depression, which is expected to continue into the future.”
The younger Altman has publicly made similar sexual assault allegations against her brother in the past on platforms like X, but this is the first time she’s taken him to court. She’s being represented by Ryan Mahoney, whose Illinois-based firm specializes in matters including sexual assault and harassment.
The lawsuit requests a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000.
In a joint statement on X with his mother, Connie, and his brothers Jack and Max, Sam Altman denied the allegations.
“Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam,” the statement said. “We’ve chosen not to respond publicly, out of respect for her privacy and our own. However, she has now taken legal action against Sam, and we feel we have no choice but to address this.”
Their response says “all of these claims are utterly untrue,” adding that “this situation causes immense pain to our entire family.” They said that Ann Altman faces “mental health challenges” and “refuses conventional treatment and lashes out at family members who are genuinely trying to help.”
Sam Altman has gained international prominence since OpenAI’s debut of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022. Backed by Microsoft, the company was most recently valued at $157 billion, with funding coming from Thrive Capital, chipmaker Nvidia, SoftBank and others.
Altman was briefly ousted from the CEO role by OpenAI’s board in November 2023, but was quickly reinstated due to pressure from investors and employees.
This isn’t the only lawsuit the tech exec faces.
In March, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sued OpenAI and co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman, alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty. Musk, who now runs a competing AI startup, xAI, was a co-founder of OpenAI when it began as a nonprofit in 2015. Musk left the board in 2018 and has publicly criticized OpenAI for allegedly abandoning its original mission.
Musk is suing to keep OpenAI from turning into a for-profit company. In June, Musk withdrew the original complaint filed in a San Francisco state court and later refiled in federal court.
Last month, OpenAI clapped back against Musk, claiming in a blog post that in 2017 Musk “not only wanted, but actually created, a for-profit” to serve as the company’s proposed new structure.
This photo illustration created on January 7, 2025, in Washington, DC, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta employees took to their internal forum on Tuesday, criticizing the company’s decision to end third-party fact-checking on its services two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Company employees voiced their concern after Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer and former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, announced the content policy changes on Workplace, the in-house communications tool.
“We’re optimistic that these changes help us return to that fundamental commitment to free expression,” Kaplan wrote in the post, which was reviewed by CNBC.
The content policy announcement follows a string of decisions that appear targeted to appease the incoming administration. On Monday, Meta added new members to its board, including UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, and the company confirmed last month that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Among the latest changes, Kaplan announced that Meta will scrap its fact-checking program and shift to a user-generated system like X’s Community Notes. Kaplan, who took over his new role last week, also said that Meta will lift restrictions on certain topics and focus its enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations while giving users “a more personalized approach to political content.”
One worker wrote they were “extremely concerned” about the decision, saying it appears Meta is “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.”
Another employee commented that by “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take.” Other comments expressed concern about the impact the policy change could have on the discourse around topics like immigration, gender identity and gender, which, according to one employee, could result in an “influx of racist and transphobic content.”
A separate employee said they were scared that “we’re entering into really dangerous territory by paving the way for the further spread of misinformation.”
The changes weren’t universally criticized, as some Meta workers congratulated the company’s decision to end third-party fact checking. One wrote that X’s Community Notes feature has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”
Another employee commented that the company should “provide an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” that necessitated the creation of a third-party fact-checking program and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of fall out from happening again.
As part of the company’s massive layoffs in 2023, Meta also scrapped an internal fact-checking project, CNBC reported. That project would have let third-party fact checkers like the Associated Press and Reuters, in addition to credible experts, comment on flagged articles in order to verify the content.
Although Meta announced the end of its fact-checking program on Tuesday, the company had already been pulling it back. In September, a spokesperson for the AP told CNBC that the news agency’s “fact-checking agreement with Meta ended back in January” 2024.
Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship gestures as he speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., Oct. 27, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
After the announcement of White’s addition to the board on Monday, employees also posted criticism, questions and jokes on Workplace, according to posts reviewed by CNBC.
White, who has led UFC since 2001, became embroiled in controversy in 2023 after a video published by TMZ showed him slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party in Mexico. White issued a public apology, and his wife, Anne White, issued a statement to TMZ, calling it an isolated incident.
Commenters on Workplace made jokes asking whether performance reviews would now involve mixed martial arts style fights.
In addition to White, John Elkann, the CEO of Italian auto holding company Exor, was named to Meta’s board.
Some employees asked what value autos and entertainment executives could bring to Meta, and whether White’s addition reflects the company’s values. One post suggested the new board appointments would help with political alliances that could be valuable but could also change the company culture in unintended or unwanted ways.
Comments in Workplace alluding to White’s personal history were flagged and removed from the discussion, according to posts from the internal app read by CNBC.
An employee who said he was with Meta’s Internal Community Relations team, posted a reminder to Workplace about the company’s “community engagement expectations” policy, or CEE, for using the platform.
“Multiple comments have been flagged by the community for review,” the employee posted. “It’s important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can do their best work.”
The internal community relations team member added that “insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE.”
Several workers responded to that note saying that even respectful posts, if critical, had been removed, amounting to a corporate form of censorship.
One worker said that because critical comments were being removed, the person wanted to voice support for “women and all voices.”
Meta declined to comment.
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Bitcoin slumped on Tuesday as a spike in Treasury yields weighed on risk assets broadly.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 4.8% at $97,183.80, according to Coin Metrics. The broader market of cryptocurrencies, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, dropped more than 5%.
The moves followed a sudden increase in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield after data released by the Institute for Supply Management reflected faster-than-expected growth in the U.S. services sector in December, adding to concerns about stickier inflation. Rising yields tend to pressure growth oriented risk assets.
Bitcoin traded above $102,000 on Monday and is widely expected to about double this year from that level. Investors are hopeful that clearer regulation will support digital asset prices and in turn benefit stocks like Coinbase and Robinhood.
However, uncertainty about the path of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts could put bumps in the road for crypto prices. In December, the central bank signaled that although it was cutting rates a third time, it may do fewer rate cuts in 2025 than investors had anticipated. Historically, rate cuts have had a positive effect on bitcoin price while hikes have had a negative impact.
Bitcoin is up more than 3% since the start of the year. It posted a 120% gain for 2024.
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