Elon Musk takes @America handle from X user to promote Donald Trump

The original @America user was a critic of both Musk and Trump.

X owner Elon Musk has once again hijacked a rare coveted username from its original user.

This time, however, the takeover wasn’t for the good of X the company, it was so Musk could promote Donald Trump for president.

On Saturday, Musk appeared at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler Pennsylvania. However, earlier that day, Musk began promoting his pro-Trump Super PAC, called America PAC, using a brand new handle @America.

“Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” Musk’s new bio said as of approximately 1:30pm ET on Saturday, Oct. 5.

The @America handle appeared attached to a brand new account setup just this month, in October 2024. However, this rare, one-word geographic handle had already been long registered by another X user more than 14 years prior to Musk taking the handle from them, in September 2010.

According to a person familiar with the situation, X took the handle from the user much like how Musk’s social media company took the @X handle from its original registrant last year. 

The taking of @America

Back in July 2023, Musk had just rebranded then-Twitter to X. However, there was one problem: A user was already on the platform with the handle @X. 

The original user behind @X, event photography owner Gene X. Hwang originally registered the rare one-letter handle way back in March 2007.  

More than 16 years after he first registered the @X account, the company now-run by Musk took it from him.

"[I] got an email basically saying they are taking it," Hwang told me at the time.

Users do not technically own their handles on X. The company has policies that outline how they can basically repossess a handle at anytime, although this usually pertains to copyright issues or misuse of a particular handle.

And, as it pertains to the @X handle, the company had a good case that they should have ownership of it as part of the rebrand to avoid confusion and potential platform safety issues – although clearly they could have handled the situation better.

However, in the case of @America, there is no X company-related reasoning to take the handle. Musk, the platform’s owner, decided he wanted the @America handle to promote his presidential candidate of choice, Donald Trump. 

“There is only one candidate in this race who is on the right side of these issues: Donald J. Trump,” the @America handle posted after Musk took it over.

So, what happened to the original @America account? X changed the handle on the account to the much-less unique and catchy @America123_12. Their posts still exist. It appears the original owner hasn’t posted on X since it was called Twitter, in May 2020. 

The original @America user had previously criticized both Trump and Musk. Posts exist on the account from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic called Musk “irresponsible” and Trump’s actions “anti-American.”

“Freedom is not the question here, its safety. You're irresponsible. Are you even a full time resident?” the original @America account posted in May 2020 in a reply to Musk.

X’s policies do make mention of how inactive accounts are eligible to have their usernames taken, so X certainly has extra cover there. It should be noted though, that before Musk took over the company, Twitter rarely stole usernames from users who originally registered them unless there were copyright or impersonation issues. The company itself would often register new handles, like @TwitterSupport, instead of taking the more generic @Support from the original user who registered it.

However, again, X taking @America wasn’t done in the company’s interest or due to copyright issues or even to create a neutral resource for citizens in the country represented by the rare handle.

“For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” Musk posted in April 2022, when he originally shared his intent to acquire the company then-known as Twitter.

This past weekend, he abused his power at that same company in a politically biased way.

X helped its owner, Elon Musk, gain access to the X handle @America by taking it from its original user so it can be used in a politically biased way – to promote presidential candidate Donald Trump.