Elon Musk's decision to invite Donald Trump back to Twitter is a thumb in the eye of democracy, not to mention decency. That said, there is arguably an upside to the restoration of his account, especially if Trump sticks with his initial reaction and declines to tweet anew: His previous tweets are now available to review in all their lying, destructive glory as he launches his campaign to retake the White House. They provide a tangible, timely record reminding everyone that Trump is the most unfit president America has ever endured.

It's not overstatement to argue that Trump probably would never have won that office in 2016 without Twitter's assistance. Being able to speak directly to tens of millions of his misguided fans, spreading his hate and disinformation 140 characters at a time (now 280), was his most powerful campaign weapon. It was also his unobstructed soapbox four years later for stoking the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and then fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

It was a symbiotic relationship. Trump's constant tweeting during his presidency made Twitter indispensable for friends and foes alike, which surely contributed to the company's reluctance to confront Trump's endless offenses earlier than it did. But Twitter was unable to continue denying its own culpability after the Capitol riot. Trump was permanently banned two days later.

Trump has since migrated to Truth Social, his misnamed Twitter clone, while Twitter has come under Musk's thrashing mismanagement. Musk has long criticized Twitter's content-moderation policies on free-speech grounds. (Which is nonsense. Twitter is a company, not a government agency. It has the same right to decide what speech to allow on its property as would, say, a private homeowner.) On Saturday, Musk announced he was restoring Trump's account, citing an utterly unscientific tweet-poll of the platform's users (including, by Musk's assessment, millions of nonhuman bot accounts).

Musk's likely greater motivation is to gin up users and publicity to prop up his sagging investment. Trump's casual snub of the offer throws a wrench in that plan for now, though it's unclear whether his 2024 presidential campaign might change his mind.

In the meantime, Trump's last tweets on and right after Jan. 6 alone are instructive. Before the attack, he slung claim after phony claim of election fraud and incitement to his supporters. He later tweeted a few grudging calls for peace, which the world now knows he initially resisted doing. In his final tweet, two days later, he announced he would become the first president in modern times to boycott his successor's inauguration.

It was an unrepentant exclamation mark on Trump's dangerous slander against democracy, which continues today. If his restored Twitter account serves to remind Americans just how bad Trump was for the country as he seeks to lead it again, Musk will have inadvertently done a service.

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