Donald Trump returns to X ahead of Elon Musk interview

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Donald Trump returned to X on Monday with a number of posts on a social media platform that had once banned him, in a sign that he is preparing to use the site as a megaphone in his campaign for the White House.

The posts came just hours before Trump was to be interviewed by X’s billionaire owner Elon Musk, who publicly endorsed the former president’s re-election bid last month just after the failed assassination attempt against him.

Trump’s first post on Monday was a campaign video showing a dramatic montage of limousines, military aircraft and other symbols of presidential power, as he claimed that “they want to silence me because I will never let them silence you”.

The video reminded viewers of the FBI’s 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, and the Department of Justice’s indictments of him for allegedly mishandling classified documents and conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Trump promises in the video to “totally obliterate the Deep State”.

The post had more than 8mn views in an hour, according to X. Another post criticised Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in this year’s presidential election.

Trump’s sudden reappearance on X comes as this year’s race for the White House tightens, with Harris now level or even ahead in some swing states according to surveys conducted since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate.

Trump used X, formerly Twitter, extensively before he became president and while he was in office. But the platform banned him for life in 2021 shortly after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6. He had repeatedly violated the platform’s policies, including rules against inciting or glorifying violence.

In his last tweet as president, Trump said he would not go to Biden’s inauguration.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, reinstated Trump’s account later that year and loosened the platform’s moderation policies, allowing suspended and controversial figures to return.

Musk, a self-declared “free-speech absolutist”, has also launched a campaign funding group to support Trump’s re-election.

In a campaign email on Sunday, Trump said he would be “back on X for a short time” to give “the interview of the century” to Musk on Monday.

“We’re bypassing the FAKE NEWS and taking my message straight to the American people: PEACE. UNITY. MAGA!”

Before Monday, Trump had only posted once since Musk reinstated his account — on August 24 2023, when he surrendered to authorities in Atlanta on felony charges relating to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state Georgia. Trump received a massive increase in small donations after posting his police mug shot on X.

Trump launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, in 2022, in a bid to compete with Twitter. He also previously had an exclusivity clause with Truth Social requiring him to post on the site six hours before doing so elsewhere.

The clause expired last year and Trump’s audience on X, where he has 88mn followers, is far greater than on Truth Social, where he has 7.5mn followers.

In quarterly earnings released on Friday, Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, showed sales fell from $1.19bn to $837mn in the three months to June, when it reported a net loss of $14.4mn. Shares in TMTG had fallen more than 7 per cent by Monday afternoon in New York.