Musk will pay Trump $10 million for vetoing him from X

BarcelonaX CEO Elon Musk will pay Donald Trump $10 million for ending a legal battle over the social network's ban on the US president. Trump's account on X, then Twitter, was suspended in January 2021, following the assault on the Capitol by his supporters. That day, Trump used the network to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, not to certify Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Twitter suspended the account, citing "the risk of further incitement of violence."

After buying the social network for $44 billion in 2022,Musk restored Trump's account, but the Republican, who had created his own platform, Truth Social, chose not to use it. The current president reappeared on X in August 2024.

Trump's team had considered dropping the lawsuit after Musk spent more than $250 million to fund the Republican's election campaign. But according to the Wall Street Journal The process has continued to move forward even though Musk has become Trump's right-hand man and heads the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to carry out a drastic reform of federal spending.

Other tech giants pay Trump

X is not the only social network that will pay Trump a considerable compensation. Meta, the company that brings together Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and headed by Mark Zuckerberg, agreed to pay 25 million dollars to settle the lawsuit filed by Trump for the suspension of his account on Facebook and Instagram after the assault on the Capitol. Of this amount, 22 million will go to build Trump's presidential library, and the rest will be used to cover legal expenses and compensation to the other parties in the litigation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Zuckerberg has also closer to Trumpism in recent months. Not only has it given a million dollars to the US president's inaugural fund, but it has introduced several changes to its app policies. The most significant of these are the elimination of third-party content verification and diversity, equality and inclusion policies in favor of minorities.

The US president has also sued several television media outlets. A week ago, he amended the complaint filed against the CBS News television channel, a subsidiary of Paramount Global, and doubled the amount he is claiming from it, up to 20 billion dollars. According to the media outlet, the US president has filed a complaint against the CBS News television channel, which is a subsidiary of Paramount Global. Variety, Trump alleges that CBS broadcast different answers to the same question in 60 minutesand in a previous excerpt for the program Face the nationTrump also sued the American television network ABC News and its presenter George Stephanopoulos for defamation. The network agreed in December to pay the president $15 million and make a public apology. The majority of the compensation will go to the presidential library funds and $1 million will go to the Republican's legal expenses.