President Donald Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, waves as he boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., January 20, 2021.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Since former President Donald Trump launched his campaign in 2015, Trump and Twitter enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Trump used the app to broadcast outlandish comments to millions of users multiple times a day while Twitter enjoyed the numerous users and eyeballs that Trump drew in.
That all, however, came to a crashing halt when Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account on Jan. 8, only a few days after Trump used the social network to incite an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that resulted in the death of five people.
Twitter’s decision to keep Trump off of its platform was a major crossroads for the company, and the immediate reaction from Wall Street was not good. Twitter’s stock price fell more than 6% in the first day of trading after the suspension, and since then, the stock is down more than 8%. The company’s market cap now sits at $38 billion.
In the year prior to Trump’s suspension, Twitter’s share price climbed more than 58%.