Ever at the center of the rumor mills, on Friday Elon Musk denied a new report claiming that former president Donald Trump had “encouraged” him to buy out Twitter.
The claim originated from Devin Nunes—CEO of Trump’s social media company Truth Social—in an interview with the Fox Business Network on Wednesday.
“We’re all for it,” Nunes said. “President Trump, basically before Elon Musk bought it, actually said to go and buy it, because the goal of our company is really to build a community where people are in a family-friendly, safe environment, very much different than Twitter.
“Someone has to continue to take on these tech tyrants,” he added.
The New York Post shared Nunes’ claims in a tweet early Friday, adding that Musk had been “quietly” influenced by the former president.
“This is false,” Musk replied. “I’ve had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social.”
The Tesla billionaire has repeatedly said that he will champion “free speech” if his Twitter bid goes through, and in recent weeks right-wing personalities have rejoiced about the $44 billion buyout.
That has stirred speculation that Musk will reinstate former president Trump’s account, which was permanently suspended from the platform following the January 6 insurrection because of how Trump’s tweets were “being received and interpreted on and off Twitter” and “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
As Musk noted, Trump so far has indicated that he will not rejoin the platform either way, opting to stick with Truth Social instead. It remains to be seen whether he will adhere to that pledge.
Peddling false claims about Twitter wouldn’t be a new tactic from Nunes. At the beginning of April, he claimed on Fox Business that Truth Social was home to more “interactions” than Twitter, calling it “kind of a ghost town.” It was a dubious claim, considering that Twitter has more than 200 million daily active users.