Elon Musk has announced he will go through with his contractual commitment to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

Musk first made a deal to take over Twitter back in April. Then he spent most of the summer trying to back out of the deal. Now he says he’s ready to go through with the deal after all.

Of course, returning to his original offer may essentially be an admission that Musk’s legal maneuvers to get out of the deal — which were set to end up in court this month — might fail.

As a reminder, Musk is the richest person on the planet, with an estimated net worth of $237.8 billion.*

Although it’s clear that Musk doesn’t have well-conceived plans for Twitter, he has said he wants more ”free speech.” What that seems to mean in his mind is more hate speech, more encouragement of violence, more anti-science conspiracy propaganda, and maybe even more Donald Trump.

Not long after first proposing to buy Twitter, Musk proclaimed that he would let Donald Trump back on the platform once his takeover of the company was finalized — even though Trump exploited Twitter to drive an authoritarian, proto-fascist movement that launched a violent insurrection and threatens the very future of our democracy.

Tell Elon Musk:

If you’re really buying Twitter this time, you must take affirmative steps to prevent the platform from being used to undermine our democracy. That includes, very critically, not allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.

Add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For democracy,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

*That’s according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If there are so many billionaires whose fortunes are increasing so rapidly that there’s a “need” to track their wealth in real time, our priorities as a society may be out of whack.

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