Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Consolva today. Twitter. What the heck is Elon
Speaker 1: Musk doing over there? H Yeah, the Elon Musk thought
Speaker 1: he'd march into twitter San Francisco headquarters last October and
Speaker 1: just turn that company right around with charisma and sheer
Speaker 1: force of will. Well, he's found out otherwise in dramatic fashion.
Speaker 1: The nonstopped torrent of tweets and abrupt decisions from the
Speaker 1: new owner have enraged users and send advertisers fleeing. Muska
Speaker 1: has always run Tesla and his other companies in an
Speaker 1: unconventional way, so at first it seemed like maybe he
Speaker 1: was just doing his thing. But now, after weeks of chaos,
Speaker 1: it's reasonable to wonder if there actually is any method
Speaker 1: here or just madness. My colleagues Bradstone, Sarah Fryar, and
Speaker 1: Kurt Wagner have been reporting on this saga's every twist
Speaker 1: and turn. They're here to help us understand what Musk
Speaker 1: is thinking and if his preoccupation with Twitter threatens the
Speaker 1: future of his other companies. Sarah, Kurt, Brad thanks so
Speaker 1: much for being here. Thank you for having us, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having us. Okay, So in December, the three of
Speaker 1: you together wrote the story with the greatest headline ever,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's Twitter is a Shakespearean psycho drama set in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. And in the few weeks since that story,
Speaker 1: things in Musk World have only gotten like weirder. Brad,
Speaker 1: let me start with you, what exactly is going on?
Speaker 1: And why did it have to be so strange? It
Speaker 1: really didn't have to be this strange? And I think
Speaker 1: this is the takeaway from our story. You know, Ellen
Speaker 1: is a right now, at least as a bad owner
Speaker 1: of Twitter. He's almost a bad user of Twitter. His
Speaker 1: impulses kind of clash with some of the bad sort
Speaker 1: of feedback loops of Twitter. He can't resist playing to
Speaker 1: the crowd, and unfortunately that's kind of antithetical to running
Speaker 1: a healthy company. And so we see again and again
Speaker 1: him tweeting things that you know, end up alienating advertisers,
Speaker 1: alienate users. I think there's a reason why CEOs are
Speaker 1: a kind of studiously a political crew, and Ellen has
Speaker 1: just been unable to suppress his own impulses on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and it's it's hurt the company. Advertisers are fleeing you
Speaker 1: just get the visceral sense that it's a more chaotic,
Speaker 1: more unpleasant place to spend time. That's really saying something
Speaker 1: because it was always unpleasant and chaotic. That's a really
Speaker 1: interesting point because before he made his bid to buy
Speaker 1: the company, he was sort of a Twitter power user
Speaker 1: and thought, well, hey, if I'm so good on Twitter,
Speaker 1: maybe I could run it better. But a lot of
Speaker 1: the things he said about being a free speech absolutist
Speaker 1: turned out to be sort of yeah, I get to
Speaker 1: say whatever I want, but if anyone else is something
Speaker 1: I don't like, then he has now the power to
Speaker 1: cut them off. Yeah, that's right. We all saying the
Speaker 1: power corrupts. I mean, we've sort of seen that with
Speaker 1: Ellen on Twitter. The way he ousted the owner of
Speaker 1: the account that tracked his jet, the way in which
Speaker 1: some Twitter accounts and an unauthorized way track SpaceX launches
Speaker 1: seem to have had their accounts frozen, the way in
Speaker 1: which he's fired the trust and safety staff at Twitter.
Speaker 1: All of it's fomented the kind of chaos that's heard
Speaker 1: the company. If I could jump in, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that stood out in all
Speaker 1: of our reporting was that this is a guy who,
Speaker 1: while a huge power user of Twitter and someone who
Speaker 1: clearly understands the product as from a user standpoint, he
Speaker 1: really showed up without much of a plan to run Twitter, right.
Speaker 1: He sort of had this vague idea of what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do with bots or what he wanted to
Speaker 1: do with you know, quote free speech. But other than that,
Speaker 1: he didn't I think, think through a lot of the
Speaker 1: logistics and specifics that come with running a company like this,
Speaker 1: And you know, for someone who is or was the
Speaker 1: richest man in the world, for someone who had seemingly
Speaker 1: had these other great successes between Tesla and SpaceX and
Speaker 1: and all these other projects he's doing, I think that's surprised.
Speaker 1: I'll speak for myself. I mean that sort of surprised me.
Speaker 1: Right at the very least, I thought, Okay, maybe he's
Speaker 1: got an unconventional plan, but at least he's got a plan.
Speaker 1: And I think when we were talking with sources for
Speaker 1: the story, we just sort of realized that he was
Speaker 1: winging it a lot more than I think any of
Speaker 1: us would have expected him to do. How did the
Speaker 1: whole process of Musk purchasing Twitter work out, Because it
Speaker 1: seemed incredibly hectic from the outside. Well, if you look
Speaker 1: at the messages that were exchanged between Musk and Twitter's
Speaker 1: board and Twitter CEO at the time, parag Agera Wald,
Speaker 1: it seems like he really decided to buy it on
Speaker 1: a win because he was upset with the process for
Speaker 1: joining Twitter's board and some of the precursors to that decision,
Speaker 1: and he had already decided to be a big shareholder,
Speaker 1: but it was really around the question of whether he
Speaker 1: would join the board that he got upset and said
Speaker 1: this isn't worth my time. I'm just going to buy
Speaker 1: your company, expect and offer a SAP and then he
Speaker 1: had to stick with it. I mean, he made that
Speaker 1: offer in such a whirlwind time frame that it was
Speaker 1: so seller friendly, as he described it. So he really
Speaker 1: just set himself up for this situation that was done
Speaker 1: in a matter of a fight and turned into a
Speaker 1: bigger fight and then continues to be a fight. But
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting. I mean, while it
Speaker 1: does feel and it did feel like he sort of
Speaker 1: turned on a dime in terms of joining the board
Speaker 1: and then suddenly saying no, no no, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. I want to buy this company. He
Speaker 1: clearly came in with having thought about Twitter for a
Speaker 1: long time, because he had been buying Twitter stock daily
Speaker 1: for like two months, right, So it's not like he
Speaker 1: suddenly showed up one morning and said, oh, this would
Speaker 1: be a cool idea. He'd clearly been thinking about something
Speaker 1: with Twitter. But I don't know if he expected the
Speaker 1: board to actually accept his offer for Twitter. I kind
Speaker 1: of get the sense that maybe he was throwing it
Speaker 1: out there, almost trying to apply pressure, just kind of
Speaker 1: like be a little mischievous, and suddenly they said yes.
Speaker 1: And at the time, when he's the richest man in
Speaker 1: the world, it's like, well, you know, okay, maybe I
Speaker 1: didn't expect it, but like, sure I could do that.
Speaker 1: I think what complicated things, of course, was everything that
Speaker 1: happened shortly after with the economy, and suddenly this like
Speaker 1: kind of fun side project thing that he was thinking
Speaker 1: about became much more expensive for him than he anticipated.
Speaker 1: And as we known in our story, Twitter was profitable
Speaker 1: the first quarter of two and after Musk's purchase, he's
Speaker 1: been talking about bankruptcy. He's been saying that Twitter is
Speaker 1: losing on an order of four million a day, is
Speaker 1: unsustainable and part of the reason for that is Twitter
Speaker 1: has now assumed the debt from that forty four billion
Speaker 1: transaction to purchase the company, and the first bill for
Speaker 1: that debt is coming due at the end of this month.
Speaker 1: So it's a really precarious situation now that the company
Speaker 1: is in, which explains why Musk hads do layouts in
Speaker 1: the order of magnitude that he did, and why he's
Speaker 1: been making other unusual decisions like not paying the rent.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, someone described it to me
Speaker 1: this way. They were like, Elon Musk is treating Twitter
Speaker 1: like it's an engineering problem. But Twitter is a human problem, right.
Speaker 1: Twitter is culture, Twitter is speech, it is politics. It
Speaker 1: is all of these things that require nuance and human
Speaker 1: understanding about relationships and things that are just different challenges,
Speaker 1: I should say, than you know, building a rocket or
Speaker 1: building a car. And I think there's some speculation or
Speaker 1: criticism from people who have worked at Twitter for a
Speaker 1: long time that they feel that he's just approaching this
Speaker 1: problem in the wrong way. He's approaching it as an engineer.
Speaker 1: He's not approaching it in sort of like the soft
Speaker 1: skills needed for Twitter. And I think it's sort of
Speaker 1: an interesting critique because I don't disagree with it. I
Speaker 1: do think like a lot of Twitter's problems as much
Speaker 1: as they struggle with product, and sure they do have
Speaker 1: engineering needs, of course, but I do think a lot
Speaker 1: of the biggest stuff they deal with is not related
Speaker 1: to the technology itself. It's related to kind of human behavior,
Speaker 1: and that is what shatters all the hope. Sarah, Kurt
Speaker 1: and Bread please stick around. We'll keep talking after the break. Right.
Speaker 1: You said that Alamos is kind of a bad CEO
Speaker 1: of Twitter right now. He indulges his whims, He makes
Speaker 1: theoretic decisions. Twitter was never the best run company. Um
Speaker 1: was it fixable by anyone? Like, let's say more, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of straight lace CEO came in to right the
Speaker 1: ship there, Um, what are the big challenges that the
Speaker 1: company would have faced? What needs to be fixed to
Speaker 1: make it viable in the future? Print of all West,
Speaker 1: let me turn it around and say, you know, in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, we wrote a cover story in Business
Speaker 1: Week calling Twitter the company that Couldn't kill itself, And
Speaker 1: the fundamental point was that as poorly run as this
Speaker 1: thing is, there is something that's so fundamentally addictive about
Speaker 1: it and useful about it to a certain small, you know,
Speaker 1: demographically narrow subsection of professionals that it really can't go away. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's the kind of basis point. It's still, you know,
Speaker 1: ridiculously alluring for people who just can't seem to turn way,
Speaker 1: even though they know it's destructive to their personal lives.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, there's something about it that
Speaker 1: just doesn't appeal that broadly. And every attempt the company
Speaker 1: has made over the years under Dick Costolo, under Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey to bring video onto the network, to expand the
Speaker 1: lengths of tweets, you know, it seems to have failed.
Speaker 1: Maybe fundamentally. It's just not that large of a business.
Speaker 1: And what happened over the years, and this was well
Speaker 1: before Elon musk Is I think expenses grew much faster
Speaker 1: and larger than the company could really support with its
Speaker 1: current revenue base. This was an airplane that was losing
Speaker 1: altitude even before Ellen took over. Can you put that
Speaker 1: in perspective when you compare Twitter's user base to the
Speaker 1: size of other really big social media platforms, where does
Speaker 1: it rain? I don't know, because they stopped reporting all
Speaker 1: these metrics once Ellen took over, but I want to
Speaker 1: say it's a little over two hundred and thirty million
Speaker 1: daily users. Compare that to Facebook has close to three
Speaker 1: billion users across all of its services, but you know,
Speaker 1: more than two billion on Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook alone,
Speaker 1: And so by that measure, it's what ten issue of
Speaker 1: a lot of these other services. And I think that's
Speaker 1: always actually surprised people because one of the things that
Speaker 1: Twitter's best at is getting tweets out in front of people,
Speaker 1: right Like, you see tweets on the news, you see tweets,
Speaker 1: people talk about tweets on the radio. Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: basically a president by tweet, right like he was dictating
Speaker 1: by tweet. You see the Twitter stuff, but maybe you
Speaker 1: don't have an account, And so I think that has
Speaker 1: created this feeling that Twitter is significantly larger than it
Speaker 1: really is from a user standpoint, because it's cultural impact
Speaker 1: is so much larger than its user basis. There's this
Speaker 1: feeling that Twitter is a very public and scary place
Speaker 1: to a lot of people. Not a lot of people
Speaker 1: like the idea of saying something publicly to a bunch
Speaker 1: of strangers that they don't know, especially when the reputation is, Oh,
Speaker 1: if you say something that people don't like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get harassed, You're gonna get dragged, you're gonna get dunked on.
Speaker 1: There's this fear I think of Twitter that doesn't come
Speaker 1: with some of these other networks because they're not quite
Speaker 1: as public as Twitter is. And I think Twitter has
Speaker 1: suffered as a result of that, and there's no you know,
Speaker 1: they try to do little things like their version of
Speaker 1: stories that didn't work out, to try and make it
Speaker 1: lower pressure to share and all that, but ultimately Twitter
Speaker 1: is a public square and there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are afraid to be public. I would just say
Speaker 1: there's something in the architecture of Twitter that makes it
Speaker 1: very appealing to a small group of people and totally
Speaker 1: untenable to the larger population. And since Must took over
Speaker 1: that small group of people have been talking about, well,
Speaker 1: if Twitter is gonna die, or if Musk is gonna
Speaker 1: turn it into an even more toxic place, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go someplace else. But it seems like the reason a
Speaker 1: lot of people are on Twitter is because everyone's on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and there is no other place that people can go
Speaker 1: on mass, especially after spending years and years many people
Speaker 1: building these huge followings, they worry that they won't come
Speaker 1: with them. Well, there's not really a viable alternative waiting
Speaker 1: in the wings. We've seen people promote their Massodon accounts.
Speaker 1: Masodon is impossible for a normal person to use. You
Speaker 1: have to use like several different plugins. Understand that there
Speaker 1: are different Massodon servers that you can join, and there
Speaker 1: are some other initiatives like post. But look, network effects
Speaker 1: are what keep platforms healthy. If the network is there,
Speaker 1: there's no real reason for you to join another platform now.
Speaker 1: Something that our sources and social media have been talking
Speaker 1: about for the last few years, as these networks get saturated,
Speaker 1: as they grow bigger, and as people start to leave them,
Speaker 1: is the idea that network effects can also work in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, that if there is an exodus that
Speaker 1: begins from a place, that it can accelerate and that
Speaker 1: a network can lose what makes it good very quickly
Speaker 1: as it becomes, you know, a fad. Maybe the behavior
Speaker 1: of using a place like Twitter to get caught up
Speaker 1: on the daily events in the world turns into something
Speaker 1: completely different over the next few years. You Know, what
Speaker 1: I've found really interesting is um because I agree with Sarah.
Speaker 1: There isn't an obvious something waiting in the wings, and
Speaker 1: yet there sort of is, which is Facebook, And not
Speaker 1: a single person is talking about migrating to Facebook, right,
Speaker 1: But like, why not? You know, everyone has an account.
Speaker 1: I'd probably guarantee that we're already there. We know how
Speaker 1: to use it. There's a feed, there's news, there's like
Speaker 1: all the things that Twitter does on Facebook, and yet
Speaker 1: I haven't met a single person who's like, right, Twitter
Speaker 1: is getting too tough, I'm headed back over to Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's just funny to me. But isn't that just because
Speaker 1: like the moment is passing now, Facebook was where your
Speaker 1: grandma goes. Yeah, that's kind of my point though, right,
Speaker 1: is like, this feels like an opportunity for Facebook, or
Speaker 1: should have been. But the fact that nobody actually wants
Speaker 1: to go back over there, I think is quite telling
Speaker 1: because that just sort of signals that, like, even though
Speaker 1: Facebook offers almost all of these things that Twitter does
Speaker 1: and we're all familiar with it, no one seems to
Speaker 1: actually see that as a viable replacement. I just find
Speaker 1: that interesting. As someone who covers the social media space,
Speaker 1: I would have thought this would have been a bigger
Speaker 1: opportunity for them. So is Twitter fixable under Musk? I'll
Speaker 1: go first, I'm gonna say yes. I mean it's been
Speaker 1: two months, right, Like it's been a pretty disastrous two months,
Speaker 1: but it's only been two months, and so I'm not
Speaker 1: fully ready to say this thing is, you know, going
Speaker 1: to zero or anything like that. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm personally concerned about is that, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest reason I use Twitter is for news. Right,
Speaker 1: It's where I get all of my information. It's lightning fast. Um,
Speaker 1: if there's something happening around me and I'm curious what's
Speaker 1: going on, I'm usually going to Twitter before I go
Speaker 1: to anywhere else. But Ellen doesn't seem nearly as concerned
Speaker 1: about like the legitimacy of that news and the accuracy
Speaker 1: of that news. Right. He's trying to actively get rid
Speaker 1: of Twitter's policies around fact checking and things like that.
Speaker 1: And so if I can't go there and feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm accurately in in the view of what's happening around me,
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe I have less incentive to tune in.
Speaker 1: I imagine I'm not alone in that being like the
Speaker 1: main draw I'm sure, there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: feel the same, and so I do wonder how much
Speaker 1: the misinformation stuff is going to play into Twitter's viability
Speaker 1: long term. But that's, you know, use case of one.
Speaker 1: That's my experience. I'm curious what Sarah brad think. Well.
Speaker 1: I have to say that you only need a big
Speaker 1: news event to remind yourself how valuable Twitter can be.
Speaker 1: And recently when Buffalo Bill safety to mar Hamlin had
Speaker 1: that grievous injury, or Kevin McCarthy and the repeated votes
Speaker 1: to be how speaker, you know, I find myself turning
Speaker 1: to Twitter to find out what's going on. As much
Speaker 1: as I have been kind of repelled and repulsed by
Speaker 1: the quality of the dialogue recently on Twitter, it's still
Speaker 1: is kind of unreplaceable in terms of real time news.
Speaker 1: And I think that probably is the asset he has bought.
Speaker 1: And if he has to burn it down and take
Speaker 1: it through bankruptcy to build it up again, I agree
Speaker 1: with you, Kurt. I think that there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of potential there will be right back. Bradwell Musk has
Speaker 1: been spending seemingly every waking moment of his days at
Speaker 1: Twitter or tweeting about Twitter or causing news about himself
Speaker 1: on Twitter. His other big company, Tesla, has really kind
Speaker 1: of been going through the ringer. Is this a real
Speaker 1: distraction or is that just the kind of media narrative
Speaker 1: that Musk is spending all this time on Twitter and
Speaker 1: therefore Tesla suffering. Okay, I think it's a media narrative
Speaker 1: and curtain Sarah might disagree with me on this, but
Speaker 1: you know, Tesla last year was a meme stock. It
Speaker 1: was a momentum play. It was insanely overvalued. People were
Speaker 1: piling in and there was a belief that the company
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a monopoly on electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: And not only did the market crater, but of Tesla's
Speaker 1: businesses in China and everyone who is you know, heavily
Speaker 1: in China is suffering right now. It's been closing at
Speaker 1: Shanghai plant. You know, the COVID zero policies killed it,
Speaker 1: and the stock has created in Elon has lost two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. I just don't know how different that would
Speaker 1: be if the Twitter distraction didn't exist. I think Tesla
Speaker 1: was due for a fall either way. Now I think
Speaker 1: you're wrong, because I listened to Elon Musk speaking recently
Speaker 1: on a Twitter spaces with Tesla investors, and they were
Speaker 1: bringing up Twitter over and over because they thought that
Speaker 1: that was the problem. One of the investors said, listen,
Speaker 1: my grandchildren don't think it's cool anymore that I own
Speaker 1: a Tesla. That's a problem. My son doesn't like it
Speaker 1: that you're making fun of people who use different pronouns,
Speaker 1: like this is taking the shine off of our Tesla vehicles.
Speaker 1: So I do think that that's a big issue. It's
Speaker 1: a media a narrative, yes, but it's also Tesla is
Speaker 1: about coolness, and it's about Ellen. It's about saving the
Speaker 1: world doing something that is innovative and new. There are
Speaker 1: other evs that are really exciting and very cool coming
Speaker 1: out right now. And the factor of you know, if
Speaker 1: I drive a Tesla, that means I'm an interesting, innovative
Speaker 1: person with good taste. That's shake here. Maybe he'll win
Speaker 1: some customers among conservatives. I'm going to agree with Sarah.
Speaker 1: I think this is all about optics, right, Like, would
Speaker 1: the literal output from Tesla factory be different if Ellen
Speaker 1: was there? Maybe you're right, Brad, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's actually the case, but I do think that optically,
Speaker 1: this idea that he is distracted, that he's not paying
Speaker 1: attention to Tesla as much as investors want him to.
Speaker 1: I think Sarah brings up a great point, like there's
Speaker 1: a whole group of probably left leaning people in the
Speaker 1: US who probably thought maybe they were indifferent about Tesla,
Speaker 1: maybe even thought Tesla was kind of cool because it
Speaker 1: was environmentally friendly. That suddenly they've seen, you know, Elon's
Speaker 1: personality sort of exposed if you will, on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: they're saying, why would I ever buy a Tesla? Why
Speaker 1: would I support this person? Right? Like, we see that.
Speaker 1: I see that in my Twitter feed all the time.
Speaker 1: And so I think that we're very early in this,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's sustainable for him to try
Speaker 1: and continue to do Twitter in the way that he's
Speaker 1: doing it as well as these other companies, because investors,
Speaker 1: anytime something goes wrong, investors have a very built in,
Speaker 1: easy to point to excuse for why it's going wrong.
Speaker 1: Whether it's fair or not, I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: do think that that is like a real problem for him.
Speaker 1: Because of the optics. There is a perception that Musk
Speaker 1: has had to kind of plunder Tesla in order to
Speaker 1: meet some of the debt obligations for taking on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Is that a problem for Tesla? Could they get themselves
Speaker 1: into trouble just because of the money required to keep
Speaker 1: Twitter going and where must is having to get it?
Speaker 1: Looking back on the year, if I'm Elon Musk, I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that I sold Tesla near the peak. Well,
Speaker 1: he's been selling all year. He sold close to forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of Tesla stock in the last like
Speaker 1: fifteen months or something like that. You know, the more
Speaker 1: he sort of divests his steak in Tesla, the more
Speaker 1: you feel like he has less interest or less at
Speaker 1: stake personally for its success in the future. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think that, you know, just because he's cashing
Speaker 1: out to pay for Twitter means that he doesn't care
Speaker 1: about Tesla anymore. But again, if you're a Testlas shareholder,
Speaker 1: that has to be something that you're thinking about when
Speaker 1: you see him constantly selling, you know, billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of Tesla stock. He's also constantly promising We'm not going
Speaker 1: to sell anymore, and then he doesn't. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: because he does that a lot. He says something and
Speaker 1: does another so trying to predict what Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: going to do as a fool's game. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask each of you to do that. Um, when
Speaker 1: you look ahead, what do you actually see as the
Speaker 1: future of Twitter? What Twitter looked like a year from
Speaker 1: now or three years from now. Again, we're totally speculating here, right,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the bankruptcy thing is really that
Speaker 1: far out of the question. I mean, he's basically warned
Speaker 1: like Twitter could be bankrupt, and he said this multiple times,
Speaker 1: not only two employees, but publicly as well. And I
Speaker 1: think that there's two reasons that I don't think this
Speaker 1: is that crazy. The first is that the vast, vast
Speaker 1: majority of the revenue Twitter makes is from advertising right
Speaker 1: close to and everything we've seen and heard over the
Speaker 1: last couple of months since he took over, is it
Speaker 1: Advertisers are uncomfortable spending money on Twitter. They don't know
Speaker 1: what they're gonna get. It's not considered a safe environment.
Speaker 1: And I don't think Ellen has really done anything with
Speaker 1: his own behavior or with Twitter's rules or policies to
Speaker 1: make them feel better, right, So there's no reason for
Speaker 1: me to think that advertisers are suddenly going to come back. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's revenue that's you know, we'll say, um cut
Speaker 1: in half. I don't think it's even that dramatic of
Speaker 1: an elsis. Then you add in what Sarah mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: about the debt. They're going to have these big, big
Speaker 1: debt payments do every quarter At some cases, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have multiple debt payments, do you know, in the same quarter,
Speaker 1: because they have different interest payments that are coming at
Speaker 1: three months and six month intervals. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if you say, okay, revenue is cut in half, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you're now spending hundreds of millions of dollars a
Speaker 1: quarter just to service this debt that you took out,
Speaker 1: it could be strategic. I'm not a bankruptcy expert. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly you know, I'm a little over my skis here,
Speaker 1: but I could see it being a strategic play for
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to take Twitter bankrupt, to try and get
Speaker 1: them out from a lot of this debt, and to
Speaker 1: basically say we're going to start this thing over a
Speaker 1: little bit. Well, I'll add that the idea that he
Speaker 1: would bring in another CEO is kind of fanciful, Like
Speaker 1: even if he doesn't. In name, he's still the owner,
Speaker 1: he's still the chief twit. I doubt he would empower
Speaker 1: somebody else to make decisions he doesn't agree with. I
Speaker 1: think he's going to contain it, to exert an iron
Speaker 1: grip on this thing, as Kurt says, as he takes
Speaker 1: it through bankruptcy, and then maybe as he picks up
Speaker 1: the pieces, who knows, maybe stages and I p O
Speaker 1: takes the financial loss down the line. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to see at this point how he comes out of
Speaker 1: this with anything resembling a win. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that Twitter will continue, and this is obviously speculation, but
Speaker 1: I don't see it continue to have its same place
Speaker 1: in the cultural conversation that it had leading up to this.
Speaker 1: I think that as Musk takes over the conversation and
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who are prominent on Twitter
Speaker 1: decide to give up on posting there. Um. I think
Speaker 1: people will certainly follow it for the presidential elections and
Speaker 1: other big events that happen, and they'll go there when
Speaker 1: there's a natural disaster and when something major occurs. One
Speaker 1: thing that we could see how upen as we could
Speaker 1: see Twitter pivot to be more of a entertainment platform
Speaker 1: than a real time information platform. We could see it
Speaker 1: become more like a TikTok or an Instagram, where it's
Speaker 1: algorithmically showing you content that it thinks are going to
Speaker 1: be interested in, and there's less pressure to be part
Speaker 1: of a live conversation. I would add, maybe the most
Speaker 1: the greatest example of what Sarah just said, which is
Speaker 1: Twitter sort of losing that cultural hole that it had,
Speaker 1: is the fact that President Donald Trump has been you know,
Speaker 1: able to come tweet again for almost six weeks, and
Speaker 1: he has not, right, Like, this is someone who I mean,
Speaker 1: he couldn't go multiple hours without tweeting when he was president.
Speaker 1: He's now waited six weeks to say anything, and he
Speaker 1: has eighty eight million Twitter followers, right, and so he
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, he's running for president again, right Like,
Speaker 1: It's not as if he's just like I've retired, I'm
Speaker 1: kicking it a back and I'm golf and I have note.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, he has need. He has need to
Speaker 1: get his message out to me. That is sort of
Speaker 1: a symbol of you know where Twitter's places right now
Speaker 1: in our broader culture and economy, because you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine he would have sat on the sidelines
Speaker 1: a few years ago had he been brought back. Kurt Wagner,
Speaker 1: Sarah Fryer, Brad Stone, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Wes, Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: You can read more of Brad, Sarah's, and Kurt's reporting
Speaker 1: on elon Musk at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening
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