Notorious political operator and Trump ally Roger Stone, banned from Twitter in 2017 for threatening CNN reporters, on Wednesday announced his triumphant return to the platform.
“I have just been informed that my personal Twitter account has been reinstated,” Stone wrote, adding that he would talk about it on a livestream of his show The Stone Zone. “I’m BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK,” he further bragged, attaching a photo of himself striking the V-for-Victory pose most often associated with his one-time boss and political mentor Richard Nixon.
The livestream, aired on Lindell TV, opened with a commercial for far-right conspiracy theorist and businessman Mike Lindell’s MyPillow bedding products before Stone was introduced as a “legendary Republican strategist” and “icon.” Just before he came on, the screen flashed a headline about Donald Trump pardoning Stone in 2020, erasing his convictions for witness tampering and lying to Congress, which were brought about by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Stone kicked off the broadcast by announcing that it was his and wife Nydia Stone’s 31st wedding anniversary. “As a very special anniversary present,” he continued, “I learned roughly an hour ago that my genuine Twitter page, my Twitter profile… has been reinstated by Twitter. My thanks go to Elon Musk, who is a man of his word, and who I now believe — based on this act, and a number of other acts — is committed to free speech.”
Stone had attempted to get back on Twitter in April, when Musk first struck a deal to acquire the company, but was almost immediately suspended again. “Well bitches I’m back on Twitter,” he had tweeted before the new ban took effect. “I posted a new account to prove a point,” he told the Daily Beast afterward, adding: “I look forward to whoever made the decision to suspend my account getting fired. Attn: Elon Musk.”
“You really don’t appreciate your free speech rights until they are taken away from you,” Stone said on his show Wednesday. He complained that he is still banned from Facebook for ties to fake accounts — a charge he continues to deny. (Instagram, owned by Facebook parent company Meta, also removed Stone’s accounts in 2020.)
Stone said that he’s not the same man he was when he received all those suspensions, because they came before his “Faith Walk,” or “before I was redeemed in the blood of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.” He surmised that “liberal heads are exploding everywhere across the country today.”
“I hope others who have been unfairly banned will be restored as well,” Stone said, later naming white nationalist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer as someone he’d like to see on Twitter again. (Loomer, who was kicked off the site in 2018 for anti-Muslim hate speech against Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar, handcuffed herself to Twitter’s New York office building in an unsuccessful bid to recover her account.) He promised his return to the platform did not not mean he would leave alternative right-wing platforms Truth Social, Gab, Parler, or the messaging app Telegram.
After fielding several questions from viewers, Stone introduced his guest, Jackson Lahmeyer, as a personal friend and spiritual adviser. Lahmeyer, head pastor at Sheridan Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recently launched Pastors for Trump, an evangelical organization supporting Trump’s 2024 presidential run.
“Just like I’m not the same person I was in 2017, when Twitter banned me for life, he’s not the same person he was when he decided to enter politics,” Stone told Lahmeyer as the pair discussed the former president’s supposed religious faith. He said he knows for a fact that Trump is a praying man.
Stone is but the latest of several right-wing figures and organizations to have their Twitter bans overturned under Musk’s regime, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jordan Peterson, Kanye West (who was then suspended again for antisemitic hate speech), Project Veritas, James Lindsay, and Andrew Anglin. Trump has been reinstated but is currently sticking with his own platform, Truth Social, as he vowed to do when Musk’s takeover was announced.
During Stone’s livestream, he observed that although he’s active on Twitter, he’s still not verified. Sure would be a shame if someone paid $8 for Twitter Blue and used the checkmark to impersonate him for a day. Then again, a parody would have to be even more outrageous than Stone himself — no easy feat.