MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tricked By Fake Statement Claiming Donald Trump's Twitter Account Would Be Reinstated Under Elon Musk
Oct. 28 2022, Published 3:11 p.m. ET
MSNBC’s Alex Wagner mistakenly reported on a fake statement claiming former President Donald Trump, who is banned from Twitter, would be welcomed back to the social media platform under Elon Musk, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Wagner’s erroneous report came Thursday night as the 44-year-old journalist and Alex Wagner Tonight host aired a segment about Musk’s recent buyout of Twitter.
“We will see about that ‘free-for-all hellscape’ promise and whether a certain Twitter account that once coined the term ‘covfefe’ is coming back,” Wagner joked regarding Musk’s promise not to turn the platform into a “hellscape” following his acquistion.
“Side note, just a moment ago, Trump himself issued a statement congratulating Elon Musk on buying Twitter,” Wagner added. “He says his account will be back on Monday.”
Wagner then went on to share Trump’s “statement,” not realizing it was fake.
“Congratulations to Elon Musk on his purchase of Twitter. Many people are saying that change was needed, as the old management was too concerned with the woke agenda,” the fake statement, which was also shared by a number of other journalists and Twitter users, read.
“I have been told that my account will be back up and running on Monday – we will see,” the statement continued. “Happy to be able to engage with an African-American owned business!”
After learning the statement was fake, Wagner and her team spoke out and apologized for the “error.”
“In the rush of reporting on Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter we included some bad information about Donald Trump’s reaction to the deal,” she wrote. “We regret the error.”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Musk’s Twitter takeover has sent social media into a frenzy ever since the 51-year-old billionaire first made moves to acquire the platform in April.
At the time, Musk criticized the platform’s permanent ban of certain users and suggested he would reinstate Trump’s account once officially acquiring the company.
“Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts,” Musk said in May. “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump.”
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“I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” he added.
Trump’s account was permanently suspended in January 2021 following the attack on the United States Capitol building. The former president has since created a social media platform of his own, Truth Social, and has vowed not to return to Twitter even if his ban were to be reversed.
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