Donald Trump will be reinstated to Twitter after an online poll voted for his return, the platform’s new owner Elon Musk has said.
But on hearing the news, the former US president said he had no interest in re-joining.
Mr Musk had posted a poll asking users to vote on whether Mr Trump, who was banned from the social media site by its previous owners, should be reinstated.
And the result was that he should, after more than 15 million votes were cast.
But the former president said: “I don’t see any reason for it.”
He said he would stick with his new social media platform, Truth Social.
When posting the poll, Mr Musk had accompanied it with the words: “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” – a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Mr Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in January 2021 after the attack by his supporters on the US Capitol that left several people dead.
Twitter said the decision, after the riot, was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”.
However, Mr Musk earlier this year called the ban a “mistake” and “morally wrong”.
The reinstatement poll was close – the yes vote was 51.8%, the no, 48.2%.
Many on the right of the political spectrum have long argued Twitter and other social media sites are biased against their views and quick to “deplatform” them.
After his exit, Mr Trump established Truth Social – his own social media platform, which was an almost carbon copy of Twitter.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Twitter employees were estimated to have decided to leave the company after an announcement from Musk that staffers agree to longer, more intense working patterns or quit.
Twitter’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California
The exodus adds to the rapid change and chaos that have marked Mr Musk’s first three weeks as Twitter’s owner, during which the company’s headcount had already been more than halved by redundancies and other departures to around 3,700.
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With so much of Twitter’s workforce now gone, there is speculation the site will crash during the football World Cup – one of the site’s busiest traffic events.
Many high-profile, blue-tick celebrities have tweeted farewells on the platform “in case”.
To add to Mr Musk’s business woes, Tesla is recalling more than 300,000 vehicles in the US because a software glitch can make rear lights go off intermittently, increasing the risk of a collision.
