Twitter owner Musk endorses Republicans in US midterms
Al JazeeraHis tweet to his more than 110 million followers is the first instance of an explicit endorsement by the head of a major social media platform. Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, threw his weight behind Republicans ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States, saying they could use control of Congress to act as a balance against President Joe Biden’s Democrats. Asked about Musk’s comments, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “The president has often spoken about the importance of voting, and I’m just going to leave it there as to not get involved in any kind of election conversation.” Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich described Musk’s comments as “very encouraging”. In one of his first acts, the company laid off about half its employees and flagged a drop in In a statement to the Reuters news agency, Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of Free Press, an advocacy group for media issues in democracy, said Musk’s comment showed he “is not showing himself to be an even-keeled CEO that advertisers can trust”. In April, Musk said on Twitter he believes that for the platform “to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally”.