Bonus: The Real Reason Elon Musk Bought Twitter (Maybe)

Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.

More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man. Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.

He says, He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different. He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government is so reliant on ed Elon.

Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.

Anything he does, he's fascinating to people.

Hi, everybody, Max Schafkin here with another episode of Elon Inc. We have something special for you today. It is an interview with Kurt Wagner. Kurt is a social media reporter at Bloomberg. You heard him on this podcast before, and he has a new book. It's called Battle for the Bird, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the forty four billion dollar Fight for Twitter Soul. Kurt is one of my favorite writers at bloom and he really is the go to

Hi'm Max. I am thrilled to be here. Thanks for doing this. It's fun.

It's nice to see you.

Okay, So the book, you Know, is in large part focused on this relationship between Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. But before we get there, I just want to talk about why it matters. Like, like we sort of spend a lot of time in this podcast and outside in the media you see a lot of people sort of making fun of the ways that Twitter has kind of gone downhill, But like, why does a site still matter?

Like why is it important?

In your mind?

I think when Twitter was at its best, it was the go to place for literally all breaking news, right Like, if something happens on the streets of New York, the first thing you do, literally is pull out Twitter. And try and figure out like what's going on right here, and that ultimately attracted like every journalist in the world. Essentially,

You talked about just this thing being like where the news happens. It's not quite that anymore, right, It's something like it's like that, but more right wing.

It's like that. But with Alex Jones, how do you see that evolution?

The biggest change for me has been the lack of Like Twitter was very a quick way to get the news, and now I feel like it's not quick anymore because

Right.

Basically, if you have eight dollars, you're a blue check person now. And so when you open the feed in like a breaking news environment and you're surrounded by like all these blue checks who are spouting off, you have no idea who they are. You have to pause and do your own research. And so for me, the biggest difference is, like it is not nearly as reliable as

So Twitter's founder, I guess, co founder Jack Dorsey, he was a He's he was running the company at the time this all went down. YEA. One reason I think this book is really interesting and relevant to this podcast is because in certain ways, it's like the story of it's just partly the story of Jack's sort of obsession relationship with Elon Musk, and and also the way maybe all of us put things on this person name Nelon Bus And I just want to.

Let's just like talk about how did his like, when did he get so into Elon? Like, like, when did he become this?

When did Elon become a source of interest to Jack Dorsey, you know, famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

I'm not sure if I could pinpoint the moment the admiration kicked in, but we know that it was several years before Elon took over because Jack used to refer to Elon as his favorite tweeter quite regularly.

Right.

There's several interviews where people say who do you love to follow, and he'd be like Elon Musk, he really pushes the envelope, right, And it's like one way of describing, you know, getting yourself into legal disputes with the SEC.

But like, I think that, but wait, what is it about those tweets?

Though?

I think he thought that Elon like was unfiltered, right, And I think there's I think if you ask Jack like you've heard him perhaps talk about Twitter as this global consciousness, right, Like Twitter is the global consciousness, It's it's the collective way that people think. And for Elon it was a very unfiltered thought process. As we've learned, it's just sort of like what comes into his brain

Yeah, it's weird.

It's funny how there are certain people. Elon must be one of them who are just like intuitively understand this thing and maybe understand the nature of celebrity when twenty twenty four or whatever.

So you talk about this kind of like Jack has this is on this quest.

Essentially he's still running the company, but he's got he's got this Elon specific quest, which is like essentially what to get Elon to show up and give a talk to the company, right.

Yeah, So this happens first in twenty eighteen. He tries to get Elon to come to what's called one Team, which was like Twitter's like company wide off site and at the last minute, Elon bails because he's like literally sleeping on the factory floor building. I believe it's the Tesla three at the time, the Model three. So he doesn't show up, and everyone's like, oh bumber, you know, would have loved to hear from from Elon. Now fast forward two years, it's twenty twenty and Jack get him

Doune done done.

Yeah, but it's like a movie level like foreshadowing, right, because you fast forward two years and it's like, oh, like Jack was like, hey do you want to run the company? Guess what he's asking Elon? Like, hey do you want to run the company? What's Elon complaining about? He's complaining about bots? Right, Like these things came back around, which is one of the reasons I put in the book. I just thought it was like such a remarkable scene two years ahead of the acquisition.

All right, so let's move on to the takeover, which it is just so weird in retrospect. I want to walk through this acquisition and talk about, you know, kind of what you learned in reporting. The book but I think just to kind of set the scene here, I want to take everyone back to April twenty twenty two the Ted Conference. Elon Musk, innovator, World's richest man is asked, you know what he's doing, and this is what he says. So, Elon, a few hours ago, you made an offer to buy Twitter.

Why how do you know?

Little bird tweeted in my ear or something?

I don't know. By the way, have you seen the movie Ted about the bear?

I have?

I have? Why make that off?

So well?

I think it's very important for that it'll be an inclusive arena for free.

Speech where all.

So yeah, Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So it's just really important that people have the both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the low.

So yeah, super super interesting, totally very mature, totally normal. This is great timing, right, Kurt Elon Musk, he's a genius. He's got an intuitive sense of business timing right. This was perfect April twenty twenty two for this moment.

If you're gonna overpay for a social network, April twenty twenty two was the best time to ever do that. No, his timing, of course, as we know now was was disastrous.

Right.

I mean, like he comes in, he essentially forces the board into this deal, right, he gives them this incredible offer. What he may or may not know behind the scenes is like the company has set these very lofty targets around user growth and revenue that they're not coming close to hitting. They're thinking about doing a second or a very large round of layoffs, like the business is not in a good shape. And here comes Elon the White night,

Maybe that we joke acquisition price was not as funny as I thought it was at the time.

Fifty four to twenty didn't slit past a lot of people.

All right.

So one of the things again, this was like it's it's sort of hard to overstate. I mean, Elon stands and even even those of us covered have gotten used to the idea that has happened. So it was sort of like hard to imagine why this happened. Why does this guy who who has basically dedicated his life, by his own account, to you know, making humanity a multiplanetary species,

That's right. This is the theory that was sort of outlined in Walter Isaacson's recent book about Elon Musk was that he, you know, like like all of us rich guys are max you and I know, when you just have too much money, we got to go spend it on something frivolous, right, And so this would be the equivalent of maybe a less rich person going and buying like a vacation home or a yacht or but for Elon,

Yeah, and I guess it's also that he really liked it. I get sort of related to the Jack Dorsey thing, like, hey, this is like my favorite you know, wait to spend my time. So do what you love, as they say.

Yeah, I think this for him was like a personal like favorite product that he very much loved to use, and so the idea of owning it, I guess sounded really cool when you have more money than you know what to do with.

And the next thing, the next one I want to talk about, is this text message that he gets from Tallula Riley, who is his two times ex wife. Elon does everything bigger than most people, so they've actually been married and divorced twice, and she sort of makes us a suggestion to him with respect to Twitter.

Yes she does.

So.

The super quick backstory here is that Twitter had spended account from the Babylon Bee, which is like a satire site. I guess that was making jokes about trans people quite frankly, and you know they're they're off color jokes that not a lot of people find very funny, but there are people who do, and Tulula Riley, I guess is one of those people. And she was upset that the account had been suspended, and so she texts her ex husband and says, you know, and I'm looking at this now.

S be fair, we've all had that Twitter.

Yeah, we all want Elon to buy Twitter or our ex spouses to buy Twitter. But you know, here she is basically saying, can you buy this and make it radically free speech? In a few minutes after that, Elon texts back and says, maybe buy it and change it

Yeah, there's a back, There's a whole interesting kind of side alley we could go down around Elon and comedy. He you know, the Babylon B is kind of a competitor to the Onion. He at one point had tried to take over the Onion. He got worried it was too woke. And so it does seem like somewhat plausible that he could have been feeling very sympathetic to the Babylon B and wanted to commit this forty four billion

And this is new. This is this is breaking news, folks. This is in Kurt's book that he did this, Because.

Now I'm reading a little bit into Kurt's book here, But what kurtz book reports is that before buying Twitter, Elon Musk was sending complaints privately to Jack Dorsey and Paragua Argerwall. We talked about one of those complaints just now, but also complaining about this Twitter account that's following his plane.

Yeah, so at Elon Jet you may be familiar with if you followed the World of Elon. It's literally an account that tracks the whereabouts of his private plane, when it takes off, when it lands, where it takes off, where it lands. And Elon was very unhappy with this

Well. I do think it's believable because as we know later on, he takes action, right he bans the He bans the creator of elon Jet for a time, and in fact bans anyone who anyone who speaks of elon jet. If you link to outside, you know, instances of this account, you would also get banned, and including he banned a New York Times journalists, So it's.

Clear this was a fixation.

Yeah, he did. And he created an entire new policy at Twitter on a whim about like doxing someone's real time location and how elon Jet basically violated that policy. And now elon Jet does exist, but it's like a twenty four hour delay, so basically you can find out where Elon flew yesterday versus like where Elon is flying right now. So this became a thing that he changed

All right, well, I want to fly the business jet that is this podcast to talk about the actual process of reporting this book. You've been covering Twitter for how long? I mean, like fifteen years? How long has it been, Kurt?

Yeah, eleven or twelve years? Yeah, it's been a very long time.

You have all these sources.

I'm thinking, like, how did they process all this craziness that's happening, Like world's richest man is like going to take over their company and save Western civilization or something in the process.

I think when Elon first showed up, there was actually this feeling that, you know, this is cool, this is good. The richest man in the world, who has more money than he knows what to do with, could do anything he wants, and what he wants to do is work on Twitter, And to a lot of people who worked there, that was sort of encouraging in the very least, validating

So what was the breaking point?

So there was a meeting in June of twenty twenty two, so quick on the timeline. Elon Musk arrives in late March, early April, He's acquired the company on paper. By the end of April, he starts to sort of bad mouth the company shortly after that. You know, we talked about how he realized his timing was terrible. He's sort of

This is an in person meeting, it is on this is.

On video because everyone is still basically working remotely at this point. But he shows up late. He shows up like his collar is like splayed open, his hair is sort of like messed up. There's like some random guy that no one knows who it is, who's like working in the background behind him, and it goes terribly quite frankly, like he rambles for like eight or nine minutes at the very beginning.

Kurt, by the way, we have a clip to play I think of this meeting. Let's listen to it quickly.

I mean right now, the costic seed the revenue. So that's just that's not that's not a great situation to the end, and so there'd have to be some rationalization of the headcount expenses to have revenue be greater than their cost. Otherwise twitter ismply not not viable or you can't grow, you know. But like anyone who's like this obviously like a signifaan courtur leader should have nothing to worry about.

So, Kurt, where did this come from? By the way, this this audio that we just heard.

Yeah, this was this from a source of mind who was at the company at the time, who shared it. So this was there were a lot of journalists pretty tuned into this meeting, as you can imagine, at the time, there were a lot of employees that were happy to help get this out there.

It sounds kind of brutal in some of the ways that all meetings like this are. I guess you're not the you know, you know, it's not in person, there's like a weird quality. But again, reading the description of this in your book, it felt heightened. You mentioned we didn't hear it, but I guess he eventually started talking about the aliens.

Is that is that right?

That's right?

How he had never seen proof of aliens. That was mostly how the conversation ended. So that was a bit of an odd note for people who were not used to talking about aliens during work meetings.

Let's go forward a bit and I want to talk about where this thing that is Twitter now called x that has you know, sort of how dramatically has changed since then, and also like what it means for the business, which of course what you know, what you're covering now for Bloomberg.

First of all, I just want to just like give us a little teeny.

Taste of kind of the next beat of this story, which is, to my mind, you know, November twenty twenty three. I think you know where this is going, Kurt, But Elon Musk doing some really great sales work from the stage of the deal Book conference in New York City.

If somebody going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing with money?

So how, Kurt, how does Twitter make money these days?

You funny that you should ask Max. They actually make money from advertisers and you know, the people who Elon was speaking to when he was on stage at deal Book.

Do you think, though, there's any chance that in the same way that like with cable news, you know, for many and TV news right for many years, there was kind of like one style of TV news was very objective, and then it with the advent of cable, it bifurcated or eventually bifurcated where you had like kind of like left.

Networks and right wing networks.

I mean, do you think that could happen with with like with social media, I mean that has been like kind of the bet of a bunch of entrepreneurs, none of whom have done it very well, but also none of whom are Elon Musk.

Like, is there like a multi billion dollar right wing social network? Is that possible?

I'm not super confident that that's possible, only because I feel like we've seen, you know, a version of that with true social right Like if Donald Trump can't necessarily make a purely like conservative right wing social network work at at scale, then I don't know why Twitter and Elon would necessarily be able to do that. I think it's very possible that there's several of these networks that

So what do you think is the most Elon likes to say that?

What does he like to say the most likely outcome is the funniest outcome? Or what do you think is the most likely outcome for this story? For the sort of Elon Musk Twitter story.

Until very recently, I actually thought the most likely outcome was going to be bankruptcy, quite frankly, because I thought that this company was losing money quite consistently, and I didn't know if Elon had the patients or stomach to just continually pay out a pocket for this thing to

Do you feel like Twitter this thing that has some kind of specialness to it in terms of, like like you said, like we talked about the beginning, this sort of like a heartbeat of the world's information. It's like, what is happening right now? It really even if even if you can criticize it and still feel like this thing is important and special, it'd be sad if it goes away. Does that feel like a tragedy to you? If Twitter becomes just like a way to train bots?

Have we lost something.

Here during this period and is there any hope of saving, of reclaiming or at least preserving some of what is actually really good about this thing today?

I do think it's sad, and I think that Twitter at its best was one of the most entertaining places

Yeah, it's funny. It's like, on one hand, I'm sad.

It's like you were like we were like a junkie and like we're getting this like really cut down version of the old high and we're still still into it.

On the other hand, I think you're right. There's something there is just something.

You can criticize social media and feel like it's bad and it can be a vehicle for all sorts of the ingrandizement of billionaires, but it does have a magic to it, and I think that's maybe a good place to leave things. Kurt Wagner, thank you so much for being here on Elon Inc. Battle for the Bird is out now. You can read an excerpt at Bloomberg dot com. You should also go buy the book from your local bookseller.

Kurt, thank you for being here.

And looking forward to seeing you next time as a panelist on this show.

This was awesome, Max, thank you so much. I love chatting with you and getting the chance to talk about the book, So thank you very much.

Okay, let's end it there. Thanks for listening to Elon Inc. And thanks to Kurt Wagner once again. The book is called Battle for the Bird and it's on sale now. This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmansi are our senior editors.

The idea for.

This very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering, and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and thank you as always to Joel Weber. The Elon Inc. Theme is written and performed by Taka Yazzawa and Alex Seguiera. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts and our executive producer. I'm