Whether he likes it or not, Elon Musk is now in charge of Twitter.
He's been working off and on throughout the year to purchase the company,
at various points,
he tried to weasel out of it pretending that he had issues with bots or something.
But no, as of right now, he does actually own the company and that has consequences,
some will be coming over the next few months, but some are already here.
The CEO has been fired, and the CFO has been fired, and the head of legal policy,
trust, and safety is gone, the general counsel is fired, and that's
the leadership, but regular workers for Twitter are already being fired as well.
Apparently members of a data engineering team have already been booted,
an entire team of data engineers.
The of course, these are not absolute massive millionaires, these are regular
people, but right wingers will greet this news, and the news that might come soon.
He's promised that he would fire something like 75% of the company,
he apparently told investors, that they're all woke stars, so they deserve to go.
I personally think that their people struggling to get by in a difficult
economy, but best of luck to them as they transition out of Twitter I guess.
And there are consequences as well, he is apparently very worried and should be,
that advertisers are not going to be interested in
spending large amounts of money, on a site that he is going to do.
Apparently whatever he can, to turn into the next parlor, or truth social, or
getter, or whatever other right wing social media site exists,
that people notably have not left Twitter for.
And so, they're apparently telling people, including a dozen clients of GroupM,
this is an ad buying agency, saying that, particularly if Donald Trump is
reinstated, they might pause their ad spending.
Elon musk has not done a ton to try to reassure Twitter users that he has
their best interest at heart, but
he's already put a statement, to try to placate the advertisers.
Saying, that he was buying the company to have a common digital town square,
where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.
He said that Twitter cannot become a free-for-all hellscape,
where anything can be said with no consequences.
The issue is that, his most devoted fans have been supporting him,
because they want Twitter to be a free-for-all hellscape,
where anything can be said with with no consequences.
They say, he's not ready to make a decision yet
on things like reinstating Donald Trump, he says he's going to be forming
a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
Which honestly sounds a lot like the status quo,
except probably Breitbart will be involved or something.
So anyway, there's a lot of moving pieces to this, and
we don't know how soon major changes to the platform could happen.
We can expect that there is going to be more, well for instance,
racial slurs already, usage of the N-word is up 500% from the day before,
so that's exciting times.
And we'll likely to have more ads and more attempts to milk us for
private information, anything that can make money for Elon Musk.
>> So, there's a great ironic twist in this story about the Twitter executives
that I want to get to in a sec, first on the hellish landscape, well look,
why do you think the rules exist in the first place?
The right wing makes us, and
this is why I lost a lot of respect for Elon Musk over the last year, right,
because this guy has a reputation of doing amazing things, right?
So you can't discount Tesla, and SpaceX, and all these things that he did, right?
And don't be simpleminded about it, but it's not a Black and White issue, I mean,
the guy's the richest guy in the world, it took some doing to get there right now.
He started with Emerald Mine, so it's a little bit easier for
him than the average bear, but okay, he got there.
So, but I give you that as context, but over the last year he's kind of seemed
like an idiot, and so, with the right wing goes, my God,
we need free speech on Twitter, they're discriminating against us.
And he's like, my God, is that true?
Okay,yeah, we definitely need free speech,
did it never occur to you to ask free speech for what?
Hey, wait, Twitter is already a hellish landscape,
seems like they got a lot of free speech, what's missing, did he wonder, right?
Well, we'll tell you what was missing according to the right wing, over the top
racism, over the top anti Semitism, calls for violence, all the different
things that every social media platform logically came to the conclusion.
That's really bad, if we allow that, here, let's take anti-Semitism, hey,
if we allow that and we put Kanye back on, and
he's saying all these things about going to death con 3 on Jewish people.
By the way, the person who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband today,
horrible over the top anti-Semite, okay.
So, can you let those guys back in and then next thing you know,
there's millions of comments, get the Jews, get the Jews,
you're really gonna allow that, that's insane.
So that's why when he talked to advertisers,
now that he paid $44 billion for Twitter, and he needs to make the money back.
They're like, yeah,
we don't want to sponsor people saying go kill Black people, or Latinos, or Muslims,
or Jews, or even saying outrageously awful things about them.
That's a toxic environment and we don't want to be in that environment,
and all of a sudden he's like, yeah, I mean there's, I can't say, but
no crap Sherlock, right, yeah, you didn't know that, you didn't think about that?
You thought they just made up arbitrary rules to be to oppressed the right wing,
you believe that talking point, like the world's dumbest schmucks,
believe that talking point?
Now you look at twitter, there's massive right wingers that say the most atrocious
things, and they're all allowed to say it.
They just can't say, hey, go kill that guy, or let's go get the Jews, or
let's go get Black people etc.
So of course you need those rules, even true social, and gabber and
jitter ,and all those other dumbass platform, what do they do?
They go on, right to free speech everybody, and everybody rushes in,
goddamn Jews etc, and they're like okay, you can't say that.
And then people say goddamn Donald Trump, whoa, you can't say that,
those guys have more restrictions on speech than Twitter does.
>> Yap.
>> But this idiot paid $44 billion for it, and I say idiot in this context,
I'm being fair, he's smart in other context, right?
By the way, he now acknowledges that he paid way too much,
everybody that's reporting on it, and I can guarantee you,
being in this industry I know, he paid at least $20 billion dollars too much.
And so, this is an epic disaster, for the only reason he agreed to
go through with the sale is because they sued him, which is gonna
bring me back to those executives that sued him in a second, but Jessica.
>> Yes, the bird is freed, I have a question for everybody,
if there is a bird and a billionaire decides to buy that bird,
is that bird now free, or is that bird just owned by a billionaire?
>> It's a very simple question.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Great point.
>> Listen, he bought Twitter by leveraging loans against the stocks that
he has in Tesla, how did he get Tesla stock value to go up?
He tweeted about it, he tweeted lies that it was going to go private at a certain
point, inspiring a bunch of people to buy Tesla.
He's lied about Tesla's business plans, and
their ability to achieve them within certain timelines.
He got Tesla to have stock of such high value, and
him to have such proximity to capital by lying on mostly Twitter.
Now he's facing a $258 billion lawsuit, for
also lying on Twitter about how great Dogecoin is as a cryptocurrency,
to get a bunch of people to buy it and to inflate the price then of Dogecoin.
He has used twitter to make himself a ton of money, and has used that proximity to
capital to amass a ton of power now over the public forum.
And will no doubt, be using that power to influence elections and
the dominant narrative in our country, and by the way,
if he gets subpoenaed in this lawsuit, he's gonna be subpoenaed.
Twitter will be what, subpoenaed, it will be Elon getting subpoenaed for
a lawsuit against Elon's actions on Twitter, that's a terrible situation.
>> Yeah, and you could tell that he knew he was gonna lose, when you say, hey,
I'm gonna lose billions on this purchase while you're making the purchase.
And you got out of the lawsuit and bought it anyway, that meant,
you were gonna lose the lawsuit, okay [LAUGH].
There's no question he was gonna lose the lawsuit when Twitter said, no,
you said you're going to buy, we have a signed contract, you must buy it, right?
And so, the other lawsuits in a world of pain for him as well, but
look, I will come back to the executives, so he fired all of them.
The CEO, the CFO, the top legal counsel etc., he walked in with a sink,
and he said let this sink in [LAUGH] he's a child, look, I like bad jokes.
>> I think he's really funny,
[LAUGH] you don't think that he's really funny and clever?
>> Look, no, I live in a glass house of dad jokes, okay,
so I don't care going to sink have some fun, right?
And you fired him, and people are like, no, he fired the executive,
what did you think he was gonna do?
Of course he's gonna fire the executives, those executives sued him,
[LAUGH] they're the ones who made him pay $20 billion too much.
By the way, credit for this, now the former CEO of Twitter,
because he goaded Musk to do all of this.
Originally, it was him making a comment about Elon Musk that prompted Musk to go,
yeah, maybe I'll buy Twitter.
And Twitter's a hot mess, and that CEO, and all the other executives, they had no
way of getting out of it anyway right, and they're like, you'll buy Twitter?
Yeah I bet you won't, [LAUGH] yeah, I'll offer you $44 million,
and he was like, my God, he offered 40, yes, right?
So, now when they get fired, they have clauses in their contract that give them
golden parachutes, that say, hey, upon a change of control you must get paid out,
right, you know how much the CEO got today?
Almost $40 million, and get a load of this,
he cashes out at the value that Musk paid, but Musk pretty much paid
twice what he should have, which he now as I've said, conceits to.
So if that guy had gotten normally fired, he would've gotten $20 million,
okay, but instead, because Elon is an idiot, he's gonna get paid $40 million.
He's like, I go to the dumb ass, and then he buys us at twice the value,
then he fires me, it's perfect, it's manna from heaven.
Right now, he's got to be at his house high fiving like crazy,
he never has to work again and [LAUGH] he's gotta be thinking, man,
maybe I should go Warren Buffett or something?
[LAUGH] It's working out great for me, now,
they're not nearly as unsavvy as Elon Musk.
>> Yeah.