Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has now posted what seems to be a clarification hours after he recommended voting for the Republicans in the United States midterm elections on Tuesday to counterbalance President Joe Biden’s Democrats. “To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year,” Musk said in a tweet to his more than 128 million followers. “And I’m open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future,” he added; Americans will finish voting in midterm elections on Tuesday.
Hours before this, the tech billionaire “recommended voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.” The post was still pinned on his Twitter account at the time this report was published. This has been the first time a major social media CEO explicitly took a side. In April, Musk said he believes that for Twitter “to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral.” Musk has been critical of the Biden administration and Democrats for their proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles, news agency Reuters reported citing past tweets and interviews.
The world’s richest person and CEO of Tesla took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal last month and has engaged in drastic measures including sacking half the staff and a plan to charge for blue check verification marks. Ever since the acquisition, he has also been putting out memes and jokes, which have led many people to further criticise him as thousands lost their jobs.
In one of his latest posts, he wrote: “Twitter usage is at an all-time high lol. (sic)”. Without delving deeper into what he meant, he further wrote: “I just hope the servers don’t melt!”
With inputs from Reuters
