Donald Trump returned to social media platform X on Monday, more than three years after he was banned following his supporters' attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, posting a series of campaign videos ahead of a scheduled live interview on X with tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The former president’s return to his once-favorite online forum — where he has more than 88 million followers — offers him a chance to pitch his message directly to a broad swath of voters as he faces a tight race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
As of Monday, Trump had posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter just once since Musk bought the site and reinstated his account in November 2022. But the Republican nominee is now struggling to regain campaign momentum as polls show his lead narrowing since President Biden stepped aside on July 21 and endorsed Harris.
Musk, who will host the conversation with Trump, has more than 193 million followers on X. For the Tesla CEO, Trump's return to X also represents an opportunity to revitalize his struggling social media platform and reinforce its status as a powerhouse for political news.
Since Musk acquired X for $44 billion in 2022 and set out to transform its philosophy and mechanics (cutting staff and scaling back content moderation), the site has lost some followers and advertisers. It also faces increased competition from rival platforms, including ByteDance’s TikTok, Meta’s Threads and Truth Social, the site Trump launched in 2022 in response to his ban from Facebook and Twitter.
Musk wrote on X that the 5 p.m. PDT interview would be “unscripted and open-ended on topic, so it should be very entertaining.”
Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa dismissed the X event as a platform for lies and characterized Trump and his “billionaire godfather” as “infamous for their relationship with the truth.”
“After ignoring undecided voters for nine days and counting, an angry Trump is bringing his retrograde agenda of hate and division into a Twitter conversation with fellow extremist Elon Musk,” Moussa said in a statement. “Elon, for his part, knows that Trump is a man he can do ‘business’ with, who can be bought, and who will give him big tax breaks,” Moussa added.
Trump, who has long portrayed himself as a victim of persecution by the political and media elite, posted a series of messages Monday on X, beginning with a 2½-minute campaign video that juxtaposed large crowds of his supporters alongside news reports of FBI agents searching his Mar-a-Lago estate and his prosecution by the Justice Department.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said in a voiceover. “The only crime I have committed is fearlessly defending our nation from those who seek to destroy it. The more a broken system tells you that you are wrong, the more certain you must be that you must move forward.”
Musk is likely to be an unorthodox interviewer.
Musk, who was once a frequent supporter of the Democratic Party that backed Biden in the last presidential election, has leaned right since 2020 and has become a frequent troll of left-wing politics and what he calls the “woke mind virus.” Last month, Musk spoke out against a new California law that prohibits requiring teachers to notify families about students’ gender identity changes and announced he would move the headquarters of X and SpaceX from California to Texas.
After the former president survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a month ago, Musk said he “fully” supported Trump. He also helped create a political action committee to financially support Trump’s campaign.
Over the past year, X has played a key role in the presidential campaign.
Last month, President Biden announced he was suspending his presidential campaign in a letter posted on X. A year ago, Trump himself used X when he skipped the first Republican presidential primary debate and sought to undermine his Republican opponents by appearing in a pre-recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that aired on X.
X, then Twitter, “permanently suspended” Trump’s account in 2021 after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter announced in a tweet.
A month after buying the platform in 2022, Musk asked the public: Should the former president's social media account be reinstated? Fifteen million people voted and 51.8% were in favor of allowing Trump to return.
“The people have spoken,” Musk wrote, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.” “Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
As of Monday, Trump had posted just once on X since his page was reinstated. Last August, Trump posted a mugshot after turning himself in to authorities in Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn its 2020 election. “Election interference,” the caption read. “Never give up!”
But he told Fox News he preferred to comment on Truth Social.
“I’m not going to go to Twitter. I’m going to stay at Truth,” Trump told Fox News in April 2022. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements and he’s a good man, but I’m going to stay at Truth.”
On Monday, Trump posted more frequently on Truth Social than on Twitter, sharing a series of Breitbart articles, a New York Post cover and personal comments characterizing Harris as a policy-changing fraud.
But he only has 7.5 million followers on Truth Social. It's unclear how loyal he will remain to the platform, as his margins shrink in key states like Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
