Indeed, but Musk might have spoiled it by alleging that a conspiracy of powerful Jews was behind those protests.
from @gracchus hollywoodreporter-link;
She has this way of blocking out the negative and almost speaking her mantra until it becomes the truth. Or she thinks it’s the truth.”
he. is. just. an. entrepeneur. he is not an engineer! he is an idiot and its all bullshit.
and he is a “genius” in making money from other people, mainly in the form of goverment subsidies.
he. is. a. conman. ffs.
(sorry, but seriously…)
I think this is a bit of revisionist history, and doesn’t make sense in the actual timeline of events. Musk definitely wanted to invite Nazis into the Twitter bar, but he clearly didn’t want to own the Nazi Bar.
@gracchus mentions it below, too, but…
Early 2022 Muskrat buys shares in Twitter that cause him to exceed the threshold of share % and puts liability on him he doesn’t want. He sells shares to go below the threshold.
A short while later he makes an offer to buy Twitter outright at well over the per share value. He doesn’t expect Twitter’s Board of Directors to accept the offer, just be intimidated into letting the “nice Nazis” in. This is evident because he waived due diligence. No one serious would do that.
To Musk’s surprise, the Board accepts his offer. Musk spends half a year trying to back out of the deal.
This is where his ego takes over.
When it becomes apparent that the Delaware chancery court is going to force him to consummate the deal, or pay a $ Billion penalty, rather than pay the penalty and walk away he decides he can run a Social Media company and make it profitable. “I’ll show you!” He fumes at all the people making fun on him.
He borrows money from various sources, putting up shares of Tesla as collateral. If Twitter fails, he’ll lose those shares. Will he lose control of Tesla? I don’t know (and can’t recall). But it’s not ideal and he’ll look like a fool.
So he tries to run Twitter as a Nazi Bar. He fundamentally doesn’t understand Twitter’s business model, which is content moderation for an advertising platform. He learns quickly that there aren’t enough Nazis or people willing to associate with Nazis to pay the rent and utilities, but rather than kick the Nazis out, fumigate and rebrand the bar, then reopen for non-Nazi patrons, he throws a temper tantrum about how no one wants to be a Nazi just to spite him and bankrupt him.
If he wanted to buy and kill Twitter for his ex-wife, he wouldn’t have spent half a year trying to weasel out of the deal, then another year flailing about trying to make it profitable. He would have just shut it down last October.
He was trying to be an edgelord and the Twitter board called his bluff. He has no idea how to run a social media / advertising platform company. He believed his sycophants when they told him he was a genius, but in reality he’s a dullard who just got ridiculously lucky.
(1) Last year, Sam Bankman-Fried accepted the Dealbook interview invite and ruined himself. This year, it was Elon. If this trend continues, they should just hand the reigns over to Isaac Chotiner.
… whereas he has now lost dozens of billions in declining stock value instead 
Hogwash, if Roald Dahl taught me anything, it’s that a strong enough elephant can pretty easily whip you round and round his head, and then let go, flinging you directly into the sun.
ChatGPT didn’t want to create the image for me using either real artistic styles, or real people, so this was the closest scientific illustration I got:
…That doesn’t say that an elephant couldn’t fling someone into interstellar space just as easily though.
Fair enough. Just so long as we accept the premise that elephants can fling anyone anywhere they feel like.
Consider your audience, always.
Musk’s surprise, but no-one elses. The offer was so overpriced Musk didn’t really give the Board any choice. And when you add the waving of due-diligence…
Nope. Which is why I’m sure the Board’s thinking was you only get one chance to separate a fool from this much money.
I’ve read claims we’ll be reading about Twitter going down the gurgler in business textbooks of the future. No we won’t. “Being a dumb, needy edgelord is not adequate experience for running a billion dollar business” is hardly a revelation.
Look at the board’s decision tree:
We get a Billion dollars is he backs off (and he looks dumb)
or
We get 40 Billion if he doesn’t back off (and he looks dumb)
They were the real winners and real geniuses.
Except that was never the case. That only held if someone else stop the purchase, like the government. He was bound for the full amount. He might have been able to negotiate an exit, but why would they?
the billion bucks were the exit; pay us the billion as penalty or go trough with the deal. those were his options.
No, it wasn’t. That was ONLY if an external force stopped it. Him changing his mind wasn’t covered in that billion.
Im confused… wasnt
this “external force” not this court-decision?
This whole meltdown reminds me (in a good way) of my father.
He was a school principal, and dealt with his share of difficult people. I called him after a very long day on site and asked him “Do you know how to tell someone ‘go fuck yourself’, without saying ‘go fuck yourself’?”
I could hear his grin when he replied. “Ah! Yes. You say: 'Thanks for your input. If you could put that in writing, we’ll put our reply in writing, and we can go forward from there.”
“My god, that’s perfect.” I said.
“Wait: there’s more. After you use that and they go away, they’ll likely call you back. You’ll probably want to hang up on them. Don’t just hang up - ask a question first. Something like ‘That’s interesting. When do you propose we do that?’ Nobody thinks you’d hang up after asking a question.”
I don’t think the $1B was ever an option in the case. It was buy it or Twitter closes the case because he gave them enough to make them go away. There was no reason for them to negotiate lower and their duty was done as soon as he bought it.
If he couldn’t get the financing or FTC / SEC / EU / whoever said “no”, then they get the $1B. The court case wasn’t going to do more than enforce the contract, maybe with some additional penalties. He didn’t want a deposition, so he folded.
Your father sounds awesome.
