this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Reminder: He was forced to buy Twitter by a judge and was doing everything he could to avoid buying Twitter.
He is using it to control the headlines, but that's not the reason he bought it. The reason he bought it is that he was forced to. He wanted to back out of the deal.
That doesn’t make any sense because he was the one who offered to buy it in the first place. He signed binding contract to purchase it, then tried to back out prob not because he didn’t want it, but he realized he was overpaying. He has obviously loved owning Twitter as far as the attention and social power he gained.
He should have paid the $1 billion to back out and made another offer, but he’s sleazy, prideful, stingy and stubborn and wanted to back out for free by employing bullshit excuses and lawyers.
IIRC he made a joke offer to buy it in a Tweet at a certain price per share (that was ridiculously high) and because he was literally just sanctioned by the FCC for market manipulation his joke had to become a reality in order for him to avoid serious penalties (the FCC was DONE with his shit at this point).
Everything since then has just been off his dome. Obviously it's pretty bad up in there since it's just a roaring money fire ATM.
He started out by buying 9% of Twitter and violating financial regulations by not disclosing it. There’s an article with a timeline here: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/twitter-elon-musk-timeline-what-happened-so-far-rcna57532
He was trying to do a pump and dump. Buy shares, say he is going to buy at a huge premium, sell when the price shots up. He had already done something similar.
Twitter said they would take the deal and the SEC said follow through or go to jail. So he borrowed heavily against his Tesla stock to buy Twitter at the ridiculous price.
Twitter didn't make enough to pay the interest even before he ran it into the ground. So he has to keep his creditors happy. Saudi Arabia is one if the big ones and they hated people being able to say whatever they wanted on twitter.
You can make the argument that something was the reason he originally made the offer to buy Twitter, but that seems separate to me.
If I talk to friends about wanting to dye my hair pink as a joke, then they propose a bet making me do it if I lose, I lose and do it, then the reason my hair is pink is that I lost a bet, not whatever I originally suggested.
If I eat something I don't like because there is nothing else in the fridge, the reason I'm eating it is that there is nothing else in the fridge, not whatever reason is there for it to be in the fridge in the first place (a visiting friend left it behind).
In all cases, the situation was created by some other event, and in Twitter's case, there was an original reason he made the offer, but it did not end up being the reason he bought it, because he wouldn't have bought it otherwise.
That's how I see it.
He spent billions of dollars to buy 9% of Twitter, was offered a board seat, it didn’t work out, then he made a formal offer. This apparently followed some drug soaked night at Larry Ellison’s, but it was never a joke. Maybe a Schrodinger’s joke.
I never said it was a joke. He fully intended to buy Twitter, then decided he doesn't want to buy it, but was forced to do it.
That was because it was a good deal at the initial price be proposed, but the price went to shit and he tried to get a better price