Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has plenty of newfound critics following his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion on Monday. But aside from his detractors, who generally exist on the political left, he has also ruffled some feathers within Trumpworld.
Among the loudest critics of a Musk-owned Twitter appears to be none other than Jason Miller, a former Trump adviser who is now CEO of the right-wing Twitter rival Gettr.
“I think Elon Musk is going to find out it’s easier to land a rocket ship on Mars than it is to change the culture of Twitter,” Miller said Monday night on Newsmax while bashing Musk, a fellow supposed “free speech” absolutist.
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Gettr launched (and was almost immediately hacked) in July of 2021 after being billed as an anything-goes speech haven for conservatives online. But the platform has ended up with censorship controversies of its own, at one point booting an influential far-right white nationalist, banning a former Blaze TV host for using the “n-word,” and as The Daily Beast found, censoring accounts that refer to the app’s Chinese financier as a “spy.”
Nevertheless, Miller insisted this week that his app will reign supreme over a Twitter run by Musk, who has long been critical of the social-media app’s restrictions aimed at reducing harassment, hate speech, and misinformation.
“This isn’t about swapping out the CEO,” the Gettr chief exec continued while insisting that Musk will have to clear house at Twitter in order to improve it. “Fixing [Twitter] I don’t think is possible.”
Elsewhere, Miller wrote an opinion piece, published to longtime pal Steve Bannon’s website, that read more like a press release for his blundering social media venture.
“Instead of trying to fix the unfixable, let’s focus on building up new platforms that ensure Silicon Valley doesn’t have a censorship monopoly on our country’s civic dialogue,” he wrote, making a pitch similar to that of Devin Nunes, CEO of the Trump-owned Truth Social, who has declared Twitter to be a platform of the past for conservatives.
Yet, never returning to a Musk-controlled Twitter doesn’t seem to be in the cards for many users of Nunes’ and Miller’s apps—especially if former President Donald Trump does eventually return to Twitter. (The ex-president told Fox News on Monday that he intends to stick with his own app, despite having posted only once.)
As reported this week in The Daily Beast’s media newsletter Confider, many users on sites like Truth Social, for example, seem unconvinced about the Trump-owned platform’s future now that ostensible ally Musk owns Twitter.
“TruthSocial will fold once Elon buys Twitter and Donald Trump is tweeting,” one Truth Social user wrote. “It will go the way of Parler and Gettr.”
Another pro-Trump user wrote: “I was hoping Elon would sell his shares, delete all his accounts, [and] come to Truth Social.”
Conservative media types, meanwhile, have been largely supportive of Musk buying up Twitter, giving many—including the likes of banned MAGA star Roger Stone—hope that they might soon be allowed to return to the platform.
Fox News host Dan Bongino, a Parler investor, seemed excited about the news: “Elon Musk owns the libs.”
