MyPillow founder Mike Lindell makes brief return to Twitter before being banned again
Self-described 'free speech absolutist' Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion this week
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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who was permanently suspended from Twitter last year after repeatedly making the baseless claim that former President Trump won the 2020 election, created a new account on the social media platform Sunday but was banned again just hours later.
"Hello everybody, I'M BACK ON TWITTER. My only account is @MikeJLindell! Please RT and FOLLOW to SPREAD THE WORD," Lindell tweeted shortly before noon.
A Twitter spokesperson told Fox Business around 5:00 p.m. that Lindell's new account had been "permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on ban evasion."
Michael Lindell, CEO of My Pillow reacts as U.S. President Donald Trump attends a Made in America roundtable meeting in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S. July 19, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria / Reuters)
Lindell had included a video in which he explained that other fake accounts were imitating him and @MikeJLindell was his only real profile.
"Please share it with everybody you know… so that we can get the word out over here at Twitter in case they do take it down," Lindell said in the video, before it was deleted with his account.
Twitter's policies prohibit people from circumventing bans and suspensions by creating new accounts, but it remains unclear how the site's policies will change after Elon Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist," purchased it for $44 billion.
People close with the Tesla CEO told the Wall Street Journal this week that Musk "remains dismayed that former President Donald Trump is still barred from the platform."
CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk speaks at the Tesla Giga Texas manufacturing "Cyber Rodeo" grand opening party in Austin, Texas, on April 7, 2022. (SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Trump, who was also banned in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, said that he won't be returning to Twitter even if policies shift under Musk.
"I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH," Trump told Fox News this week.
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Musk, meanwhile, said Wednesday that "Truth Social (terrible name) exists because Twitter censored free speech," and has pledged to implement changes at his newly-owned company.
"For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally," Musk tweeted this week.