Elon Musk is running a poll asking Twitter users whether former President Donald Trump should be reinstated on the platform, and has generated 7,683,554 votes as of 4:00 a.m. ET on Nov. 19, with 15 hours left to vote.
At the moment, the โYesโ votes are in the majority with 53 percent. Those who donโt want to hear from Trump on Twitter are at 47 percent. Musk wrote in a following tweet, โVos Populi, Vox Dei,โ a Latin phrase meaning โthe voice of the people is the voice of God.โ
In his latest tweet, Musk said โTrump poll getting ~1M votes/hour!โ regarding the popular poll.
Musk has a following of nearly 117 million on the platform. When commented by a user that his polls have started to become โstatistically significantโ given the large number of followers and that Twitter should have an โAll Usersโ poll where the poll would be seen by every single user, Musk replied, โWhen polls are about a significant question, even those who donโt follow me tend to hear about it. That said, I agree with the idea of an all-user poll. Should also be an all-user by country poll.โ
Kari Lake, Arizona gubernatorial contender, replied to Muskโs Trump poll with an โeyesโ emoji, while Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, said, โYou kind of promised you wouldโฆ.โ
Trump was suspended on Twitter following the Jan. 6 Capital breach incident in which he was accused of inciting violence, although the president told supporters to protest peacefully and lawfully. Trump had amassed nearly 90 million followers before the suspension.
Musk had called the ban on Trump โflat-out stupidโ and that โIt alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.โ He said that bans should be reserved for bots, or scam and spam accounts.
Calls Mount for Removing the Ban
Other users were calling for the unbanning of several other prominent Twitter influencers like Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA & DNA vaccines who was suspended and censored by major outlets following his criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines; cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough who was banned for the same reason; Michael Flynn, Trump supporter and former National Security Advisor of the United States; James Lindsay, an ardent critic of marxism; news network Project Veritas; and Trump supporter and political strategist Steve Bannon.