Is Elon Musk Making a Run at a Twitter Takeover?

CLAY: There is a really interesting First Amendment issue that is playing out that I think could be as consequential in terms of our national discourse as any story that has happened — and this may be a little bit of hyperbole, but I don’t think so, Buck — in the last decade or more, certainly in our social media era. And everybody out there right now, whether you’re on Twitter, whether you’re on Facebook, whether you’re on Instagram, TikTok, however you spend your time.

And I understand some of you are not hardly on social media at all, but that is where much of the town square debates of the day now take place. And the place that is the most consequential in terms of influencing thought, debate, and discussion is Twitter. And Twitter has become increasingly stultifying in terms of what they permit to be said on their platform. I probably don’t even have to explain this to all of you because some of you have probably found yourself banned because you have unacceptable opinions, like President Trump.

BUCK: Are you getting hit with, like, misleading about mask up? Because I started to get hit again. I’m on the radar again. Now when people see any tweets about masks morons, it’s always, “This is misleading, click here for health data.” I’m like, Twitter is wrong; I’m smarter than all the morons behind the scenes doing this stuff. I just want to go on the record.

CLAY: So, Twitter is, to your point, Buck, when they’re making that choice, that is a choice all of publisher, not the choice of a platform. When they are exercising, as they are regularly now, editorial control, they are not a platform, by which it means anybody can come on and say many different things, and they’re not gonna pick and choose what they decide to emphasize, what they decide to give credence to.

That is what a platform would do. They’re a publisher. They’re choosing what stories trend. They’re analyzing what those stories are; they’re picking sides, and that has driven Elon Musk — who I believe is presently still the richest man in the world. Elon Musk has got 85 million followers on Twitter and in addition to running Tesla and Solar City and SpaceX and all these other different companies that are within his control, he has gotten fired up over the editorial decisions that are being made by Twitter.

Recently, he put up a poll asking if we thought — meaning the larger community — that Twitter was a free speech place, a place where free thought was permitted. And 70% of the voters in his poll said, no, it was not. And I think that 70% is accurate. And so this morning, Buck, news broke that Elon Musk has bought 73.5 million shares of Twitter. He now owns 9.2% of the company.

He is the largest single shareholder of Twitter anywhere, and I want to play this audio analysis here from, I believe, CNBC. But as we speak right now, Buck, Twitter stock is up 30% on the day, all the way up to $51 a share. It is up nearly $12 overall, because many people out there are of the opinion that Elon Musk may be prepared to go buy Twitter to try to take control of it to make a run at owning this company and making a change in its content filings.

Now, one bit of news. The filing said that Elon Musk bought these shares by March 14th. I was just talking to a friend off the phone during this break. So Elon may now own more than 9.2% of Twitter. We don’t know what his total holdings are because you don’t have to update your holdings when you own this high a percentage of a company on a day-to-day basis. So there may be more purchasing going on right now. But here is a discussion surrounding what exactly might be going on there. Let’s listen to, I believe, this is from CNBC.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Twitter shares, they are surging right now, up a little over 25% because Tesla CO Elon Musk has now taken a pacify stake in Twitter. The stake amounts to 9.2% of Twitter’s common stock. What do you make of it?

DAVID IVES: Musk is not gonna do this just to take a passive stake. He’s gonna ultimately try to either really change Twitter in terms of more active stake, or eventually could lead to a buyout. If you look at how Musk looks at social media, this groundswell has been there. Twitter obviously, you know, looks like the perfect sort of candidate and I think this is just a start of Musk taking a much more ’til role, at least even just for starters at Twitter.

BUCK: This has huge implications, right —

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: — because Twitter, for those who aren’t on it — and I know most of our audience right now all across the country is not on Twitter or at least not active users of Twitter. It’s a pretty small percentage of the country overall that really uses it, but it is — for those who work in politics and media — the closest thing that exists to a town square, and I will say, just think back to the Trump presidency.

Trump was able to do a lot of what he did, particularly in fighting back against the media because he had a 75 million or so person email list, in essence — instantaneous email list — where he could share his thoughts directly without having to sit down with CBS without having to sit there while reporters from the corporate Democrat news channels pepper him with hostile questions.

He could just said, “This is what I’m thinking.” Now, some people might say that sometimes that was great; sometimes it maybe hurt Trump. But the point is Trump had an end run on the Democrat corporate media narrative until it became obvious that social media is actually a part of the Democrat corporate media in terms of their products and the way they’re trying to control the national conversation.

So you had a sitting president kicked off of what was the closest thing to a digital town hall or digital town square, and the left cheered this. They say it was a good thing. It’ll be fascinating if Elon Musk does this. First of all, those of us who used this have been very front of the for a long time because, Clay, I lost 150,000 Twitter followers after the election, something along those lines, kicked off, all gone, right? They’re all booted off of Twitter for election stuff or whatever.

I’ve never seen… That’s never happened to the left where there’s been a huge purge of people for wrongthink or whatever ’cause there would be no journalists left ’cause they all went along with Russia collusion; they all suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop, right? They’re all complicit in all kinds of major lies that affect politics. If Elon Musk just makes it — doesn’t have to be explicitly conservative; obviously it won’t be.

If it just becomes a platform that adheres to real free speech principles — well, you can’t violate the law, right? You still wouldn’t be able to threaten that you’re gonna kill somebody. You still wouldn’t be able to do certain things on there. Violations of law, we can agree on ’cause it’s the law. What Twitter does is a whole range of conversation shaping overtly and covertly. There is shadow banning. There are ways the algorithms privilege certain people.

There are blue checks you’ll come across on there, Clay, who are crazy blue-haired, nose ring lib types who have 300,000 Twitter followers. No one’s ever heard of this person before, right? But because they’re an esteemed, you know, scholar of some aspect of left-wing Marxist theory or whatever, all of a sudden… This would be a game-changer for the public conversation, I think, among the media apparatus, broadly speaking. And it will be fascinating to watch people on the left who had been, “It’s a private company; they can do whatever they want.”

CLAY: Oh yeah. That’s the best.

BUCK: All the sudden will be, “There need to be regulation. All this free speech going online is hurting my feelings.” They’re gonna be crying about it. All the lib journos you see have gotten used to thinking there’s so much more important and so much more popular than they are, folks, all the blue checks because they’ve been on a platform that’s helping them all the time at the expense of their competitors!

CLAY: It will be so fun, Buck, to see all the people who have been saying, “If you don’t like the way Twitter is run, just go start your own company.” You’re like, “No, actually, Elon Musk decided to buy this one. Yay, capitalism.” And to me the question that will be paramount and is paramount as you now see that he has 9.2%… Buck, you know this. Usually what happens when someone makes a raid or a substantial acquisition of a company like this is they come out with their list.

I don’t want to say demands, but basically, “Hey, this is what needs to change. I want this many board seats. I want this company to be put up for sale.” There’s always a list of intent that is shared in some way when acquisitions like this typically happen, this many shares. What I wonder is, is Elon Musk going to make a run at buying up over half of the company? Does Elon Musk have…?

That’s a possibility. Does he have good relationships with substantial equity holders in Twitter — meaning many big equity funds, many big hedge funds — such that those companies might share their shares with him to allow him to basically put forward a new slate of board of directors? Does Elon Musk have an interest in buying Twitter and taking it private so that it’s no longer a public company, but that he can run it in a way that makes sense going forward.

There are so many questions we don’t know the answer to right now, but Elon Musk is putting his money where his mouth is. And, Buck, if you listen to this show, we told you that this was a definite possibility, that Elon Musk is worth $300 billion, I think, ish, and so right now Twitter has a market value of $40 billion.

It’s had a big run-up today, but for around less than a 10th of his total net worth, Elon Musk could theoretically own Twitter. So what is going to happen here? The other question I have, Buck, is there are all of the really wealthy billionaires that are part of that PayPal Mafia, the group that made their initial billions through PayPal, the Peter Thiels of the world.

Peter Thiel was obviously a big Trump supporter. These guys have libertarian and/or conservative leanings, and I think Elon Musk is in this category. I wonder if a bunch of those guys could also combine to decide to buy Twitter because of the major impact it could have in terms of our national discourse. I just think this could be the biggest story relating to the First Amendment in the twenty-first century if Elon Musk follows through on what I believe he is likely to be attempting to do.

BUCK: Interesting to see what the implications are as well, not only if Trump comes on board again on Twitter — and again, assuming he’s going to run for reelection. But what would this mean for TRUTH Social? There’s all these other startups and ventures that are trying to create public squares. Maybe this actually feeds into them at some level, because people will realize this is actually the way forward. Obviously in the short term it looks like this would be very challenged for some of those conservative — or I should say it’s not conservatives. Important to get this right: Free-speech-minded platforms.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But for me the thing that will be fascinating is how you will see on a dime the blue check lib Mafia all of a sudden saying, “Wow, we need so much more governmental regulation of this, whatever. We need…” They’re gonna be pushing for, “Oh, we need more hate crime legislation as it affects Twitter. We need all these things.”

Because here’s the thing about the Democrats that they’re kind of aware of these days more so than usual. Their ideas are bad, and people don’t like them when they know what’s really going on, and they can’t win unless they have a rigged game. That’s the central truth of the Democrat Party today, and Twitter has been a rigged game for them, among other things — and that might stop. That might end.

CLAY: And they don’t actually want to engage in debate, Buck. They don’t want to debate ideas. They just want to immediately allege that everyone who disagrees with them is racist, sexist, homophobic. They don’t actually debate issues, they just attack, which on some level I respect. But my goodness, the hypocrisy is gonna be staggering if Elon Musk continues to buy up Twitter and all these people who say, “It’s a private company; if you don’t like it, just leave,” are suddenly gonna be saying, “Oh, this can’t be. This is unacceptable. This is… The free-market capitalism can’t work here.”