Elon Musk Teases Trump’s Twitter Return With a Poll

In the same vein, the Babylon Bee account was banned for misgendering Rachel Levine, a four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and the nation’s highest-ranking openly transgender official. Kathy Griffin’s ban was brief; she was suspended on November 7 after changing her account name to Elon Musk. While impersonating Musk, she tweeted: “After much spirited discussion with the females in my life. I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is only right (They’re also sexy females, btw.) #VoteBlueToProtectWomen”

Musk said he would let her back on the platform if she agreed to pay $8 for a blue checkmark.

The controversial poll fell a few days after 1,200 Twitter employees fled from the platform. Earlier this month, he slashed half of the then 7,500-person staff and four top executives, begging the question: how many people still work at Twitter? The remaining staff is estimated to total less than 2,000.

The resignations follow Musk’s incendiary email earlier this week. He told employees they “need to be extremely hardcore” for “Twitter 2.0,” and will require “working long hours at high intensity.” Musk added, “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.” Employees were asked to respond whether they would stay at the company by Thursday at 5pm.

The ultimatum email came just days after Twitter paused its controversial Twitter Blue subscription service, which sparked massive impersonation—à la Griffin—and backlash for ridding the identity verification feature. Musk tweeted that Twitter will see the service return “probably at the end of next week.”