Tesla CEO Elon Musk rejected a claim made by Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes about former President Donald Trump’s role in his acquisition of Twitter.
Musk responded to a tweet from The New York Post linking to a story about Nunes’ claim.
“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,” Devin Nunes said during an interview with Fox Business Network.
He added, “That’s why we encouraged Elon Musk to buy it, because someone has to take on these tech tyrants.”
Nunes claimed Trump “wanted to make sure that the American people got their voice back and that the internet was open and that’s what we are doing.”
He added, “People like Elon Musk doing what he’s doing, we’re definitely in favor of it.”
Musk responded to the story, saying, “This is false. I’ve had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social.”
This is false. I’ve had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022
Musk’s response comes just a day after sources told CNBC he is expected to serve as a temporary CEO of Twitter after he closes the deal.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal reportedly said during a companywide town hall meeting last month, “Once the deal closes, we don’t know which direction the platform will go.”
Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey believes Musk’s offer is what the company needs.
Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner of investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted, “Twitter has great promise as a public square, it suffers from a myriad of difficult issues ranging from bots to abuse to censorship. Being a public company solely reliant on an advertising business model exacerbates all of these.”
He added, “Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.”
Dorsey replied, “This is true. It needs cover for a while.”
