Elon Musk has engaged in a battle of wits, one-sided so far, with former United States President Donald Trump. In a social media post, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO slammed Trump-owned TRUTHSocial and said that the social media platform has a “terrible name.”

Musk is set to become the new owner of the microblogging website Twitter after the company’s board of directors accepted his takeover offer of roughly $44 billion. The deal is still being finalised, with Indian-origin Parag Agarwal holding onto his CEO designation.

In a follow-up post on Twitter, soon-to-be-owner Musk suggested another name for Trump’s TRUTHSocial. He wrote, “Should be called Trumpet instead!.” He added that TRUTHSocial only exists because Twitter decided to censor free speech.

Musk also posted a screengrab of the Apple Store on Tuesday, which showed the top trending apps on the platform. In the list, TRUTHSocial grabbed the number one spot, while Twitter was second. “Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store”, Musk wrote.

The social media posts come as Musk has proclaimed himself as a “free speech absolutist” while he was finalising his takeover of Twitter. While some politicians in the United States have backed the billionaire, others say they are “concerned” after the takeover.

While addressing the political angle of the debate, Musk continued his string of tweets and wrote, “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

A bit of history

Minutes after Elon Musk’s takeover deal was announced, GOP’s Trump announced that he would not join Twitter and would stick to his own platform TRUTHSocial, a look-alike of its competition.

However, Trump went on to express his support for the deal. The former President told Fox News, “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man.”

Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended in early 2021 after he was accused of inciting violence in a mob that later stormed the United States Capitol complex in Washington DC.