The richest man on Earth, founder of the private space company SpaceX and likely future owner of Twitter Inc, Elon Musk, said he would allow former US President Donald Trump to return to Twitter. Trump himself has not yet commented on Musk’s statement – Twitter and other social networks have blocked the accounts of the former president.

Musk spoke via video link at the Financial Times conference. “I would lift the ban,” he said, referring to Trump’s ban on Twitter accounts.

Musk, however, noted that his deal to buy Twitter has not yet been completed. “It’s not something that’s certain to happen,” he said.

Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he owes much of his success to Twitter. “Without the tweets, I wouldn’t be here,” he told the Financial Times in 2017.

Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” and Trump’s return to social media may confirm this: the former US president was banned from Twitter after numerous complaints that he was spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and his political opponents.

The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and Trump’s refusal to recognize the results of the 2020 presidential election were the final straw. Social networks have decided that Trump through his accounts incites his supporters to violence. At the time of the blocking on Twitter, Trump had 88 million followers.

Musk believes that this decision, on the contrary, contributed to the growth of Trump’s popularity among the American right. He called the ban “immoral and just stupid.” Trump has filed a lawsuit against Google, Twitter and Facebook, alleging he was the victim of censorship by them.

Trump has said in an interview with Fox News that he will not return to Twitter even if he is allowed to. He is trying to launch his own social networking app, Truth Social, but with mixed success: in February, it appeared in the Apple Store, but at first it malfunctioned.

The board of directors of the company accepted Musk’s offer to buy it at the end of April . He has since said he could make Twitter payable for commercial users and politicians.