Elon Says He’ll Lift the Ban, But Should Trump Go Back to Twitter?

BUCK: Clay just sent me this one, ’cause we’re running a real-time News Ticker between the two of us throughout the entire show. Elon Musk has said… There’s so much we could fill in there, by the way. Elon Musk has said that if his purchase of Twitter goes through, he will lift the ban on President — former President — Trump.

And this is interesting because if that’s the case, we then have a situation where Trump is on TRUTH Social right now and TRUTH Social is — and I don’t say this as a knock on them, but TRUTH Social is at this point less than 1% the users of Twitter. I think — is that about right, Clay? I mean, maybe it’s less than 2 or 3 percent, but it’s a tiny fraction of the overall users.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I’m on TRUTH, Clay is on TRUTH. What does the former president do? Because that Twitter account, the Trump Twitter account was able to shape the news cycle. It was able to change the national conversation, and that really… I think Trump took Twitter from being a news journo and kind of superficial scroll-through platform that some people used, to the heart of the news cycle for a lot of people a lot of ways. The president of the United States was speaking in real time to 80 million followers. What does he do here, Clay? How does this play out?

CLAY: I’ll tell you, you know when I was doing sports talk radio 6 to 9 a.m. Eastern. In that 6 a.m. hour, everybody else was asleep, sometimes you hit the refresh feed on your Twitter feed, and it would be, like, Donald Trump and me.

BUCK: (laughing)

CLAY: So he was not only setting the national agenda, Buck. He was doing it early in the morning before a lot of the journalists were even up and he was tweeting late at night and all throughout the day. This guy is an animal when it comes to his work ethic. I just think it’s a really difficult call. So, first of all, I think it’s smart of Elon Musk because it sets the precedent that banning people, especially permanently banning people who are the sitting president of the United States or a potential candidate in 2024 is not a good idea.

So I think from Elon Musk’s perspective, right decision. More difficult situation: Can Trump join Twitter, or is he contractually obligated to only use TRUTH Social? That is the number one question I would have, because it’s likely that they have given Trump a lot of money for his exclusivity in the social media platform regime there. Second part here. Is he actually benefiting from getting his Twitter account back?

Now, Buck, I can totally see the benefit when he was a candidate and people were not familiar with what he believed, and he didn’t have the ability to reach them as easily and he could mobilize them. The people who love Trump are already active on social media, in love with Trump. Right now, Biden is a decrepit old man who is failing on all fronts, and so the story is: Biden stinks.

As soon as Trump reemerges, the Great Satan of the Blue Check Brigade out there, I think that it might work against him, because in 2024, in an ideal world, you make the case that Biden has been bad and doesn’t deserve, as a part… If Biden’s running the Democrats, they don’t deserve to be back in office.

They don’t. It’s a referendum on the incumbent. If Trump becomes active again, my concern, Buck, is 2024 is a referendum on Trump again and Biden gets a pass on how bad he’s been. So I don’t know that he benefits. Do you think he benefits? Like, how do you analyze this?

BUCK: It’s so hard because —

CLAY: Like, if you were the advisor and he came to you and he said, “Buck, should I get back on Twitter?” Take away… For us, it’s obviously great because we can react to tweets. We’re in media. But if the goal is to win election —

BUCK: I’m gonna say this and it hurts me to say it because, one, I used to love the occasional… You know, the occasional Trump retreat was always amazing.

CLAY: No doubt. Yeah.

BUCK: Because all of a sudden, some guy that I saw on a sitcom back in 1994 was cursing at me in all caps. How does this person…? Oh, it’s ’cause of Trump retweeted it. That was always fun. That’s the guy from Charles in Charge. He hates me now. That’s not that show, but just making one up, ’cause I think Scott Baio is actually conservative.

CLAY: He’s actually got a functional brain.

BUCK: Yeah. Yeah. He’s a good dude from what I understand. Anyway, I was just picking a random show. But, yeah, I think if we’re talking about what the most likely pathway is for Trump, look, I almost feel like it’s too early. I feel like it’s too early to even go here but I will say it anyway. We need a Trump 2.0 —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — where there’s more focus on results, where there’s less focus on people that honestly kiss up a lot and are actually effective. There were some people who were very good. I’m just saying. We had Steve Miller on this show a lot. One of the reasons is Steve Miller’s a smart guy really knows his stuff and was effective in the White House. I mean, there are others too.

I’m not one of these people who say, “Oh, everybody who was in the first administration shouldn’t be in the second administration.” But you need to have good advisers around him that he would listen to — and this is basically my long preamble for, “For him getting reelected, I don’t know if Twitter is actually helpful” I think the media then creates…

It feeds into the lib media obsession with Trump the man and the person instead of the movement,” and it just becomes, “Look at this mean thing he said or look at this,” and, you know — and, now, the people could argue. By the way, this is one of those things where if someone thinks they hear that and they say, “Buck, you’re totally wrong.” I’ll admit, I may be totally wrong on this one.

But I think Trump, without running his own Twitter account on a daily basis. (laughing) You know, maybe we could limit it. But the thing is, man, once the Trump bear is loose, I don’t know if you get him back in the cage, man, like once he has that Twitter account back, I think he’s gonna do what he wants to do, and —

CLAY: I actually like the idea of him having Twitter, Buck, if he’s reelected because he’s already president. But the actual campaign Twitter? I don’t know that he benefits because I think it allows people to characterize him and start to make the case that 2024 is about Trump, when the reality is — and even 2022 if he’s back sooner than that when the reality is — 2022 and 2024 are about Democrats failing on an epic level. Nothing Republicans have done has caused where we are right now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. Elon from earlier today saying that he will reverse the Trump ban if he ends up owning Twitter. Remember, that is in process. It’s not like he’s walking into buy a new lawn mower, you know, swipes the credit card and it’s all done. There’s a big process here. There’s always the possibility of some federal government regularity trying to step in. Some on the left have even called for that. Elizabeth Warren walking around saying, “We have to regulate the social media companies,” and all of a sudden, we have to regulate them, Clay.

CLAY: Of course.

BUCK: It’s almost like when they don’t have whatever they want, then the rules have to change.

CLAY: Yeah. And we were debating that. That’s Elon Musk, by the way, in London in the last hour or so discussing the potential return of Trump to Twitter. I don’t know. Again, I think this is a huge debate that could play out for some time. And I just put up, by the way, this is a poll question, if you want to go vote @ClayTravis: “Is Trump coming back to Twitter good or bad for a potential 2024 presidential campaign?”

My inclinations is kind of like yours, Buck, that it would overall be bad — and, by the way, let me say this. A thousand people have voted in the last couple of minutes. You can go vote yourself. It’s nearly dead even 50-50. There are a lot of Trump supporters out there on my Twitter feed. It’s not like these are huge Hillary Clinton people rolling in.

BUCK: This is a tough call. This is one where there’s some things, a lot of things, where I’m like, “I’m right, and anybody disagrees with me is wrong.” It’s probably 90%, maybe 97% of things. This is one where —

CLAY: That’s because you’re not married, by the way. The percentage goes down when you’re married.

BUCK: It goes down dramatically.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told. Yeah. Something to look forward to. But this is one where I’m persuadable either way. I think you can make a strong case that Trump galvanizes the movement, reaches around the — goes around the — mainstream media and is able to bring his message directly to the people, and that’s really important and powerful. But then there’s also, you know, #covfefe (laughing) and people kind of getting distracted by some of the random things that Trump would go off on tangents about. And so, you know, I don’t know. I mean, it’s great for us if he has a Twitter account.

CLAY: Incredible for us.

BUCK: Is it best for the party, for the country, for the American people if he has Twitter back? I don’t know. And then there’s also the possible contractual issues that come up as a result of TRUTH Social. I don’t know what those are, but they could be there.

CLAY: I can’t imagine that they gave him hundreds of millions of dollars potentially in equity in that company without restricting him contractually to being able to go back to Twitter.