In news that represented a body blow to the pursuit of free speech, Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter fell through last week. As RedState reported, the billionaire announced the move after it became clear that the social media giant was not going to answer his concerns about bot accounts in a satisfactory way.
Twitter didn’t take the news lying down, though. The board quickly released a statement asserting that the deal was legally binding and that they would go to court to enforce the terms, which currently call for Musk to pay $44 billion for the company.
Now, Musk has responded exactly as you’d expect.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2022
You’ve got to love the guy’s sense of humor, but I’m a lot more concerned about how this plays out in the real world. So many of the details of the now-defunct deal are murky, and it’s hard to know exactly what was agreed to and what wasn’t. Did the terms require Twitter to release the information that Musk is asking for? Will a court force it to be released in order to see the deal enforced? Those are open questions that go well beyond Musk’s meme.
Let’s just say that I hope there’s more here than just trolling. Yeah, I think it’s hilarious that Musk continues to drag Twitter like this publicly, but does he have a real plan here? Is there a pathway for him to still buy the social media company, perhaps at a renegotiated price? Again, those are questions I don’t have the answers to.
Still, I wouldn’t count Musk out. He didn’t go from a $2 billion net worth to over $200 billion dollars in less than a decade by sheer chance. The guy is brilliant, and he has the money to pay the best people to make sure this gets done. If Musk wants Twitter, the deal will happen, if for no other reason than the fact that the Twitter board can’t afford for it to not happen.
The company’s stock plunged on Monday after the markets got a chance to react to news of the deal collapsing. Twitter knows it has to make this work or the already unprofitable company could end up in the midst of absolute turmoil.
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