Speaker 1: What's fleet would my Max? I'm Robert Evans and this
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about
Speaker 1: the album Rumors, which was written by a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who when they were making it, we're all bastards
Speaker 1: to one another. Uh oh yeah. With me with me
Speaker 1: today to talk about Rumors is a Cody Johnston and
Speaker 1: Katie Stole. How are we doing today?
Speaker 2: Everybody so good, so thrilled to be here to talk
Speaker 2: about Rumors with you.
Speaker 3: You know what I always think about.
Speaker 2: I always think about how hard it must have been
Speaker 2: to be Christy McVie. Yeah, oh god, yeah, you got
Speaker 2: Stevie Nicks there.
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 2: She was wonderful. R I p uh huh, absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2: You got a little out shown shined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, outshun. It's hard. It's hard to it's hard
Speaker 1: to be up against that, you know. I'm sure she
Speaker 1: was aware of it, and I think that I think
Speaker 1: that that bleeds through. That's part of the part of
Speaker 1: the feel that uh you know that that that the
Speaker 1: album has. But who's favorite song on Rumors? Favorite song?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What? What do we got? Is everyone just going to
Speaker 1: say the chain I.
Speaker 4: Was gonna say I was going to say.
Speaker 3: It's too hard to not.
Speaker 4: Great about.
Speaker 5: I was talking about this over the weekend, just like
Speaker 5: Flo Back in general, they're an amazing band because like
Speaker 5: you'll hear a song and you'll know that it's necessarily
Speaker 5: Fleetwood Mac because they've got such a wide range sound
Speaker 5: and vocalists.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I was gonna say the Chain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard, but there's a lot. Yes, it's the Chain.
Speaker 3: Are you talking? I also like throw your own way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, jam a woman old A side and B side?
Speaker 1: Are we talking old dust woman? Like there's A and
Speaker 1: B Why would why would you split them up? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Dreams, I'm sorry, there's so many.
Speaker 1: Dreams, Silver Sobers. Yeah, Secondhand News I think would be
Speaker 1: mine after after the Chain. That's just such a fucking banger.
Speaker 3: You're right, there's Second News.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a great album, What an incredible album.
Speaker 3: Should we start playing it now?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just listen to to rumors and think about how all
Speaker 1: of the lives lost in the cocaine industry were worth it?
Speaker 1: Thank god, thank god. No, we should probably get on.
Speaker 1: This is uh, you know, a podcast, you know what,
Speaker 1: you know what the business is, right, We've been doing
Speaker 1: this for five years. You guys have been on dozens
Speaker 1: of times. Probably Now we're doing a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different thing this year. We have another court case
Speaker 1: to go over. The last time I had y'all both on,
Speaker 1: we talked about the big lawsuit against Fox News, and
Speaker 1: we went through the legal filing that Dominion's lawyers had
Speaker 1: against that after all the discovery. Today we are reading
Speaker 1: through a legal complaint from Wolf from Arnold, Eric Frozy,
Speaker 1: Tracy Hawkins, Joseph Killian, Laura, Shan Pitite, Lars and Andrew
Speaker 1: schlakesher Man. Why did all of you have complicated names
Speaker 1: to say? Unbelievable? So these guys are all honestly yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm against them already. Oh wait, no, they're suing
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, so I'm back on their side. So each
Speaker 1: of these people are former longtime employees of Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I'm very frustrated by this legal document from the start,
Speaker 1: because the first sentence of the introduction reads, plaintiffs are
Speaker 1: each longtime former employees of Twitter, and then in parentheses
Speaker 1: colloquially and hereafter referred to as tweeps. Wait, the tweets,
Speaker 1: they're the tweets.
Speaker 4: T sweeps.
Speaker 1: Oh, tweets, but they're choosing to be referred to as tweeps.
Speaker 3: That is too tweet. That's too tweet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, waity, what is.
Speaker 1: Going on with you? Is it that like they legitimately
Speaker 1: had so much pride in old Twitter that they had
Speaker 1: to do this because it's a bad decision, like legally legal.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Did did the tweets decide to call themselves the tweets?
Speaker 1: I can't imagine their lawyer insisted on it, right, It depends.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: That was a big part of the culture, right there
Speaker 5: was it was that was used to talk about them,
Speaker 5: and it was on all their little merchant stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but we're talking in the law.
Speaker 4: Maybe you don't need to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you could.
Speaker 4: Yeah the alleys you want to be taken seriously, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They could have.
Speaker 2: I mean, twits is right there, but I guess right
Speaker 2: there on connotation the twarps.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, uh, these these people who the
Speaker 1: the lawsuit and forms has have more than sixty years
Speaker 1: of collective experience working for the company, were all either
Speaker 1: fired or constructively discharged by Twitter right after Musk took over.
Speaker 1: Some of these guys were pretty senior. There's a vice
Speaker 1: president in there, there's a global lead in there when
Speaker 1: they they got ship quote, and due to that seniority,
Speaker 1: some of them were in the room where it happened.
Speaker 1: After Musk's takeover of Twitter, privy to and participants in
Speaker 1: high level discussions and deliberations among Twitter's new leadership. After
Speaker 1: the merger led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants
Speaker 1: who were internally referred to as the Transition Team, Twitter's
Speaker 1: new leadership deliberately, specifically and repeatedly announced their intentions to
Speaker 1: breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.
Speaker 1: And they put those words into action. Plaintiff Killium was
Speaker 1: forced to resign from Twitter after being repeatedly and specifically
Speaker 1: directed to violate California's building codes in ways that potentially
Speaker 1: put tweep lives at risk. See, if you say it
Speaker 1: like that, you're making a very serious allegation. And I
Speaker 1: can't take it seriously when people's lives, yeah, lives.
Speaker 3: Because I was immediate like tweep yeah. No.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm okay with tweeps dying. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: okay with people dying, but tweets. But tweets, that's some
Speaker 1: other thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 5: When they say the phrase they were in the room
Speaker 5: where it happened? Is that in italics?
Speaker 1: No, it's in quotation marks. I think it's a reference
Speaker 1: to that book by that Trump staffer, in the room
Speaker 1: where it happened.
Speaker 5: I think it also, knowing the content and context and
Speaker 5: the fact they're calling someone's sweeps, I think it also
Speaker 5: might be a Hamilton reference.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you kidding.
Speaker 4: Herd Hamilton's in Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there is from Hamilton and Hamilton.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was on one of those streamers and I watched
Speaker 4: the I.
Speaker 3: Watched it, stomach it because of living well.
Speaker 4: I couldn't. I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: He' Julie Corney, and I think he's shouldn't have been
Speaker 5: the guy in the in the show, but the room
Speaker 5: yourself shouldn't be there whatever.
Speaker 1: The room where it happened is the White House memoir
Speaker 1: of John Bolton, former National Security advisor. So they're either
Speaker 1: at John Bolton reference either way, I'm not.
Speaker 4: It's definitely.
Speaker 2: Question guys and girls, everyone, do you want us?
Speaker 3: Do you want us to take you?
Speaker 1: Seriously? Don't call yourself sweeps.
Speaker 2: Don't get yourself sweeps and don't reference either Hamilton or
Speaker 2: John Bolton legal filing.
Speaker 3: Don't pitch yeah the first three sentences.
Speaker 1: Like you are alleging that Elon Musk ordered you to
Speaker 1: violate California building codes in a way that put human
Speaker 1: lives at risk. You don't need to be tweet like.
Speaker 1: We don't need to make this like like I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm very frustrated.
Speaker 4: You don't need to put on a pants suit and
Speaker 4: sing hallelujah.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, of the fucking Twitter old guard. Yeah, very funny.
Speaker 1: I expected to be more immediately on board with the
Speaker 1: people suing Elon Musk because I hate him so much,
Speaker 1: but they have done the hard work of making me
Speaker 1: right in the middle so far I am. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am steering down the median on a fucking crotch rocket
Speaker 1: at the at the moment, so in ways that potentially
Speaker 1: put tweep lives at risk in building the Twitter hotel
Speaker 1: rooms Musk wanted for tweets he would be pushing to
Speaker 1: work through the night. Plaintiff Hawkins was forced to resign
Speaker 1: after Musk and his transition team fundamentally changed the nature
Speaker 1: of her job and threatened her professional reputation by directing
Speaker 1: Twitter to breach its leases and essentially steal space from
Speaker 1: its landlords. Elon doesn't play rent. They're still doing a
Speaker 1: little I'm stealing space from landlords I don't know.
Speaker 4: Again, I'm very frustrated against.
Speaker 1: Because like the thing that Elon's that comes next is
Speaker 1: like he one of Elon's transition team members told Hawkins
Speaker 1: Elon doesn't pay rent, And Elon told me he would
Speaker 1: only pay rent over his dead body, And I'm frustrated
Speaker 1: at the degree of like again, especially since he spent
Speaker 1: so much time like flipping out over crime and San Francisco.
Speaker 1: He's like this big law and order fascist weirdo. Now
Speaker 1: the fact that he just refuses to pay rent, like
Speaker 1: fuck him, Like that makes me extra angry for Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: but also, like, I don't know the the it is
Speaker 1: hard to make someone get too outraged about stealing from
Speaker 1: like a giant corporate landlord. Yes, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: tension here if you want to, if you want me
Speaker 1: to be like, well, maybe there's one cool corporate landlord
Speaker 1: I don't know send in like mercenaries to force Twitter
Speaker 1: out of their offices. Right, there's an impound their servers.
Speaker 1: You know, like be a real asshole about it, and
Speaker 1: then at least you'll be a cool, like corporate ghoul.
Speaker 1: You know, go for it, guys, do do what Think about?
Speaker 1: Think about what that guy, the bad guy in RoboCop
Speaker 1: would do in this situation. You know, he would send
Speaker 1: he would send Bodiker in to like fucking beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of Elon Musk when he's having a cocaine party.
Speaker 1: You know that that's what he'd you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if at two oh nine destroyed Twitter's offices, I'd
Speaker 5: be like, all.
Speaker 1: Right, well, I'd be like, what okay, Okay, one landlord
Speaker 1: gets to stay a landlord. So both Killian and Hawkins
Speaker 1: were told that from Musk, the fact that Twitter was
Speaker 1: legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would
Speaker 1: be irrelevant to the decision of whether to actually pay
Speaker 1: it when that amount came due. That must operate it
Speaker 1: on a zero cost basis, and that Twitter would therefore
Speaker 1: simply decide afresh for each significant expense whether or not
Speaker 1: it wanted to pay what it owed. This seems very illegal,
Speaker 1: but he's got enough money that it's not right, like
Speaker 1: because he can just hold it up in court for
Speaker 1: forever and yeah, it'll be fine. It's very frustrating. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the streets in San Francisco
Speaker 1: because they couldn't pay you know, what they owed in
Speaker 1: rent or whatever, and Elon's just going to continue advocating
Speaker 1: they'd be put in death camps. I guess that's cool, exactly.
Speaker 2: It is interesting how differently we treat these two very
Speaker 2: different Uh.
Speaker 3: Yes, examples of rentivation, Like.
Speaker 1: I would be surprised if the total number of people
Speaker 1: evicted in San Francisco last year, like the amount that
Speaker 1: they owed that got them evicted, equalled what Musk has
Speaker 1: failed to pay on his properties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just thinking about yeah, yeah, anyway, okay.
Speaker 1: And back on board with yeah, back on with the tweets.
Speaker 1: The tweets say that Musk flatly refused to pay them.
Speaker 1: They're contractually required severance. This was severance that Twitter and
Speaker 1: Musk had in order to induce tweets to stay through
Speaker 1: the close of the merger, promise would be paid if
Speaker 1: Musk conducted a layoff in which Twitter and ex Holdings
Speaker 1: had bound themselves to pay under the terms of the
Speaker 1: merger agreement. Seems clear that they owed this money. Uh.
Speaker 1: And basically the alliation is that Musk never even intended
Speaker 1: to pay people, right, Like he was just lying to
Speaker 1: get people to work without pay, which is like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's in like the the neighborhood. That's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's illegal, Like you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: make people work without getting them.
Speaker 3: No, I would say, it's not just in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It's staunchly like, yeah, that seems like crimey.
Speaker 4: That's like the town.
Speaker 5: Even if it's not crimey, it's unethical and immoral and
Speaker 5: he's a bad person.
Speaker 4: I'll just there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but how could it not be crimey?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Musk went so far as to insist publicly that
Speaker 1: tweeps he fired are not entitled to any severance at
Speaker 1: all beyond warn act notice. In hindsight, it appears that
Speaker 1: he also inserted a legally ineffective, specific no third party
Speaker 1: beneficiaries clause in the merger agreements provisions relating to severance
Speaker 1: in a failed attempt to prevent tweeps from enforcing those provisions.
Speaker 1: Plaintiffs bring this action for a declaratory judgment against the
Speaker 1: merger agreement and the related but independent promises and representations
Speaker 1: to the tweeps entitle them to the promise severance to
Speaker 1: recover that severance, as well as punitive damages for defendant's
Speaker 1: flavorant bad faith. YadA YadA YadA. They quote a bunch
Speaker 1: of laws that Musk probably did in fact break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So uh we go in we we detail the case
Speaker 1: of like a couple of these these people. They're just
Speaker 1: kind of like listing their work histories, which I don't
Speaker 1: feel like we need to know for any particularly reading. Yeah,
Speaker 1: worked at Twitter, spent a lot of time as a
Speaker 1: as a tweeper, tweeping up, you know, pretty hard. Defendant
Speaker 1: Musk is, on information and belief, a citizen of the
Speaker 1: state of Texas residing in Bokachka, Texas. I wonder how
Speaker 1: much time he spends in Boka, Chica. But people have
Speaker 1: been allowed to fake being from Texas for forever. We
Speaker 1: had a whole president do it once. Look at look
Speaker 1: at look it up people. All right, So now we're
Speaker 1: up to the factual background statement here. This litigation arises
Speaker 1: out of Twitter's Sorry My Mouse. This litigation arises out
Speaker 1: of Twitter's attempt to avoid paying its ex employees. The
Speaker 1: Sefarence that promised them. Twitter made these promises many times
Speaker 1: and in many ways. Twitter made these promises in their
Speaker 1: initial offer letters to the plaintiffs. Twitter made the same
Speaker 1: promise explicit in its agreement to sell the company to Musk,
Speaker 1: negotiating for a clause in the agreement that protected its
Speaker 1: employees by ensuring they would have seen received seference at
Speaker 1: least as favorable during the post merger period as they
Speaker 1: had under the old management. And Twitter man went out
Speaker 1: of its way to make additional promises and representations to
Speaker 1: its employees to allay their concerns in advance of its
Speaker 1: purchase by Musk and to convince them to stay employed
Speaker 1: at Twitter. Penning the close of this transaction, Twitter broke
Speaker 1: all these promises, breaching its enforceable agreements with its former
Speaker 1: employees in the process. Now I'm going to say this
Speaker 1: right now, I suspect the people who sold Twitter to Musk,
Speaker 1: the former people running it, the former board, were well
Speaker 1: aware that all these employees were going to get fucked
Speaker 1: and simply didn't care because they got their bag right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why the deal was made. Because I have
Speaker 4: had them so much.
Speaker 2: I don't have any sympathy or uh. I don't know
Speaker 2: care for the people that sold Twitter in general.
Speaker 1: No, no, I mean I I yeah. It seems like
Speaker 1: they ought to be liable to some extent too. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of due diligence they should. I'm sure they
Speaker 1: did enough legally. I don't think they're actually they actually
Speaker 1: have any exposure there. I just think it's in more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it just kind of goes through the details of
Speaker 1: the merger, the details of like how they set up
Speaker 1: this severance agreement. So Twitter committed to providing employees with
Speaker 1: two months base salary or incentive based salary for sales employees,
Speaker 1: pro rated performance bonuses through as through all as though
Speaker 1: all triggers for such bonuses has been hit. The cash
Speaker 1: value of any RSUs those are like internal stock units
Speaker 1: that would have vested within three months of separation cash
Speaker 1: contribution through the continuance of healthcare coverage. So it's like
Speaker 1: a pretty good severance agreement. I think it's better than
Speaker 1: we got it cracked. Yeah you know that right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds what they.
Speaker 3: I can't speak to that because they never hired me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well they yeah, I corporate America something none of
Speaker 1: us have any issues with. I don't know all these tweets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these tweets seemed like they were promised a pretty sweet
Speaker 1: deal if they stayed on to like ensure the company
Speaker 1: didn't fall apart right before the deal and then Musk
Speaker 1: immediately months Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So they
Speaker 1: list some of the different things that like, you know,
Speaker 1: Musk said during the process of like that whole back
Speaker 1: and forth of or whether or not he was going
Speaker 1: to acquire it. The lawsuit against Twitter. Okay, here we
Speaker 1: get to a point where we have that's titled Twitter's
Speaker 1: employees are worried about the pending Musk takeover, and Twitter
Speaker 1: makes representations to address their concerns. This should be some
Speaker 1: inside gossip. With the promise of Twitter being acquired by
Speaker 1: one of its fiercest critics, many tweets were understandably very
Speaker 1: concerned about their future, particularly the particular about the potential
Speaker 1: effects of the merger and their jobs. Layoffs had already
Speaker 1: been discussed as a possibility even prior to the acquisition,
Speaker 1: and it was widely reported that cuts would be needed
Speaker 1: as a consequence of the additional debt that Twitter was
Speaker 1: incurring as part of the acquisition. Given his criticisms, it
Speaker 1: was also viewed that Musk would make additional material changes
Speaker 1: at Twitter. Twitter took these concerns very seriously. If a
Speaker 1: significant number of tweets were worried enough about their future
Speaker 1: to seek new employment, it would harm Twitter's ability to
Speaker 1: continue to function smoothly while the deal was in process.
Speaker 1: Twitter therefore took several steps to reassure its employees they
Speaker 1: negotiated this merger agreement d D. Let me get down
Speaker 1: here to the next set of good stuff. Twitter also
Speaker 1: benefited from a degree of stability via employee retention during
Speaker 1: the pendency of the acquisition and the related litigation that
Speaker 1: reduced the chances of an acquisition threatening material adverse event,
Speaker 1: protecting the chances the deal would be consummated, and Musk
Speaker 1: and extending an offer to entice employees to stay pending
Speaker 1: his acquisition, also received stability the promise of a company
Speaker 1: that would be when he completed his takeover, largely in
Speaker 1: the condition it was made before the offer, allowing him
Speaker 1: to begin to reshape Twitter from a stable foundation. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: tweeps remained concerned about the consequences of the acquisition. Twitter
Speaker 1: issued an acquisition FAQ to provide employees with a resource
Speaker 1: The FAQ detailed reassurances and representations to employees regarding their compensation,
Speaker 1: how equity grants would be handled. It explicitly stated that
Speaker 1: in the event of a layoff, any employees whose job
Speaker 1: would be is impacted would be eligible for a severance.
Speaker 1: They had meetings and stuff about this. Twitter orally communicated
Speaker 1: to its employees that Musk had made the severance stability
Speaker 1: promise and the merger agreement. Yeah. Yeah. At one point
Speaker 1: to tweet posted to Twitter's internal slack, tagging Twitter's c
Speaker 1: suite leadership and communicating that the details of twitter severance
Speaker 1: would be critical to employees' decisions to remain pending the
Speaker 1: close of the merger. So yeah, they're really building a
Speaker 1: case here that, like the entire both the value to
Speaker 1: the people who owned Twitter and ran it previously and
Speaker 1: the value to Musk was reliant upon folks staying and
Speaker 1: keeping the site stable, and that they had to do that.
Speaker 1: To do that, both of them basically had to run
Speaker 1: a con on the workforce of Twitter. I think it's
Speaker 1: been more of a con on Musk than it has
Speaker 1: been on like He's It has kind of fallen apart
Speaker 1: for him as well, because the news just came out
Speaker 1: today that the company's valued at about a third of
Speaker 1: what it was when he bought it.
Speaker 3: But I laughed out loud.
Speaker 1: Both of them definitely like had to screw over all
Speaker 1: of these people in order to in order to carry
Speaker 1: out their plans. Like, it seems pretty clear what was
Speaker 1: going on all around here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they just wanted everyone to shut up so they
Speaker 5: could make the deal happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Almost immediately upon a Musk's arrival at Twitter, he
Speaker 1: instead purported to terminate executives for cause on information and belief.
Speaker 1: This occurred in some cases within hours of the takeover.
Speaker 1: In fact, on information and belief, Musk did not even
Speaker 1: intend to have Twitter pay the director's office and officers
Speaker 1: in dimnification and insurance premiums as required by section six
Speaker 1: point six of the merger agreement. On information and belief,
Speaker 1: a Twitter employee with access to Twitter's accounts and capacity
Speaker 1: to execute the payment, made that payment despite musk specific
Speaker 1: objections preventing a brief a breach of the merger agreement,
Speaker 1: and this employee was fired for doing so. So. Basically,
Speaker 1: Musk was required to pay like in dimnification and insurance
Speaker 1: premiums as part of the merger agreement, which is like
Speaker 1: that's something he's required to do under state law to
Speaker 1: keep the company like functioning legally. And he directed an
Speaker 1: employee to like cancel the payment because he's saying basically,
Speaker 1: don't pay money for anything. And so this person follows
Speaker 1: the law and makes the payment and Musk fires them. Wow,
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, leadership, Yeah, no, no, yeah, so obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean it is that yeah, yeah, what's episode?
Speaker 5: Oh just that broken brain thing of just like you're
Speaker 5: so rich and powerful and you have this idea of
Speaker 5: yourself and your view that you're like, just don't do it,
Speaker 5: just don't do anything right, just like it doesn't matter,
Speaker 5: Like the idea of like buying this company and just
Speaker 5: like we're not going to spend any money and if
Speaker 5: we do, you're fired.
Speaker 4: It's like the the idea that would work out for him.
Speaker 2: Well, just when you're that rich and powerful, you get
Speaker 2: away with lots of stuff.
Speaker 3: Look at him not paying rent.
Speaker 4: I mean yeah, and you.
Speaker 5: Think you can and I mean maybe he can, and
Speaker 5: nothing will come of this.
Speaker 3: It's like, are you really? Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's interesting also seeing all this stuff because first we
Speaker 5: saw it, as one might call it secondhand news.
Speaker 4: Yeah, her back in.
Speaker 5: The day when you get like these little little tidbits,
Speaker 5: these little snippets of like, yeah, this person said that
Speaker 5: he did this, and just seeing it all laid out
Speaker 5: in this legal complaint is interesting.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, and I think so a lot of
Speaker 1: this is kind of going over the stuff that was
Speaker 1: reported one way or the other, like as it was happening.
Speaker 1: So if you don't remember, back on November third, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, after the acquisition, he sent out an email
Speaker 1: basically saying, Hey, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow
Speaker 1: and you'll know who's getting shit canned. The next day,
Speaker 1: November fourth, they fired half of the company. It seems
Speaker 1: like the layoffs were largely organized by SpaceX and Tesla
Speaker 1: employees who sort of like came in and help him
Speaker 1: build lists. Yeah, yeah, he brought in That's what's alleged
Speaker 1: here at leaset on information Belief. Musk. You used engineers
Speaker 1: from his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX to help determine
Speaker 1: which tweets would be included in the November fourth layoff and.
Speaker 4: Then sorry, putting engineers in charge of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially since so much of the jobs aren't engineering,
Speaker 1: like for example being the people who pay to keep
Speaker 1: mandated and shit.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, it's just like this like weird like billionaire
Speaker 5: engineer brain.
Speaker 2: Imagine like people in HR or people that are trained
Speaker 2: for these kinds of conversation is one thing, but engineers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also like the people who are worse at I
Speaker 1: don't know, managing, Like do.
Speaker 2: You think that they just got people in the room
Speaker 2: and played go your own way?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should go your own way? Man? What a
Speaker 1: b No, you nailed it. So yeah yeah yeah. So
Speaker 1: you know, at this point, Twitter's been been gutted, you know,
Speaker 1: much like a big game hunter who gets impaled by
Speaker 1: a tusk.
Speaker 3: There we go, like TV Nicks in that breakup. But
Speaker 3: I like you, well yeah that's.
Speaker 1: That all that works too. So the next thing that
Speaker 1: happens is they start firing people after this like first
Speaker 1: wave of layoffs. You know, those are they're agreeing to
Speaker 1: pay severance and they're gonna fuck with a lot of
Speaker 1: those people on severance. But in order to avoid paying severance,
Speaker 1: the next thing that that Twitter does is they start
Speaker 1: over the next few days firing even more people saying
Speaker 1: they were in violation of Twitter policy. These are four
Speaker 1: cause terminations, so like they don't have to do the
Speaker 1: same things they have to do in like layoffs are
Speaker 1: e severance. So it's I mean, it's it's it's fuckery.
Speaker 1: It's also like bad for people's careers. It's one thing
Speaker 1: if like yeah, that company, the the the boss gutted
Speaker 1: it and everybody got laid off, but they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: do anything wrong that doesn't necessarily hurt your chances of
Speaker 1: getting hired again, as opposed to like getting fired for
Speaker 1: violating company policy, which can which is yeah yeah, or
Speaker 1: for paying a mandated insurance yeah.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know who does follow the law.
Speaker 3: Possibly products and services?
Speaker 1: It has to be it is, it is we most
Speaker 1: do they nearly all of them do. I mean we are.
Speaker 1: We are sponsored by the Sina Loa cartel, who have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a history of rule breaking, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, all of our sponsors are law abiding.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Or girl, m m.
Speaker 1: Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, we're back, We're back, and
Speaker 1: we're going to continue because, as our fans always say,
Speaker 1: don't stop. Oh boy, yeah yeah, yeah, this is really
Speaker 1: the episode of some of our fans as dreams. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: we should.
Speaker 3: We can't break this too far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, yeah, there out, So I accidentally started playing rumors.
Speaker 4: On my phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of the allegations against Musk
Speaker 1: are based on well, you know, the phrase they use
Speaker 1: is based on information and belief. But what is that
Speaker 1: if not rumors? Too much readful in it?
Speaker 3: Like yeah it ugh, yes, we're having fun.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Good stuff. So the next thing that Musk
Speaker 1: announces is that Twitter's ending its remote work policy and
Speaker 1: all workers have to immediately report to a physical Twitter office.
Speaker 1: This was a real problem for people who lived like
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles from Twitter offices and could not do this.
Speaker 1: Musk updated the policy after this was pointed out to
Speaker 1: him and said that Twitter would allow for a transition
Speaker 1: period for remote workers who live too far away to
Speaker 1: move to a location closer to Twitter. That's a good
Speaker 1: decision to like, uproot your entire life and move across
Speaker 1: country for a job that appears to be collapsing.
Speaker 5: Every map does need you there, yeah, and probably won't
Speaker 5: exist in like six ynths.
Speaker 1: That seems like a good call. Later, the policy morphed
Speaker 1: into one in which managers could allow their reports to
Speaker 1: work remotely if they chose to, but would themselves be
Speaker 1: fired if the employees they allowed to work from home
Speaker 1: did not perform up to Musk's undefined and unarticulated standards.
Speaker 1: What a great working environment.
Speaker 4: Well, he's just a very articulate person.
Speaker 1: No, no, he's dumb and kind of an asshole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the owner of a social media communication platform
Speaker 5: is so bad at communicating, Well, he's not.
Speaker 1: He's he bought it, you know, like he purchased. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool. So in mid November, Musk sends
Speaker 1: another email with a link to an online form and
Speaker 1: an ultimatum. Any Twitter employee who wanted to keep their
Speaker 1: job at Twitter would need to affirmatively indicate their consent
Speaker 1: by checking a box on an online form to a
Speaker 1: more hardcore working environment, which would mean long hours at
Speaker 1: high intensity and in a transparent attempt to avoid the
Speaker 1: severance obligation to which he had bound himself, Musk unilaterally
Speaker 1: decreed that employees who did not affirmatively check the box
Speaker 1: would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned in exchanged for
Speaker 1: two months of non working leave in a single month's
Speaker 1: post separation pay. That's cool.
Speaker 5: What, Yeah, How you run a company? You show your
Speaker 5: employees that you're gonna do a good job.
Speaker 4: Well, it's really important.
Speaker 5: Doesn't he want people to like have kids and raise
Speaker 5: a family, but like he also want them to like
Speaker 5: spend like twelve hours a day sleeping at the office.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure that.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: Does he want everybody to have kids and raise a
Speaker 3: family also? Well, also types of people that have kids
Speaker 3: and rais also have.
Speaker 4: Fraternity and maternity leave for his employees as well.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't want his employees doing that.
Speaker 2: Other people have contradictions that one is, yeah, vaguely, other
Speaker 2: people should be doing that.
Speaker 1: So, as part of this wave of layoffs, a substantial
Speaker 1: number of employees were laid off because they did not
Speaker 1: immediately affirmatively agree to the material changes to their working
Speaker 1: conditions that Musk had demanded, and yet that still wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: After the November seventeenth layoff, Musk again turned to engineers
Speaker 1: from his other companies to conduct code reviews of co
Speaker 1: written code written by Twitter employees. The code reviews were
Speaker 1: clear pretext to attempt additional four cause firings. The reviewers
Speaker 1: lacked the context to meaningful evaluate the code, and the
Speaker 1: reviews were completed in an amount of time. It was
Speaker 1: clearly insufficient for any good faith approach of the task.
Speaker 1: After the code reviews, Twitter fired multiple employees on the
Speaker 1: pretext that their work was not up to standard. Many
Speaker 1: of those employees had received uniformly positive performance reviews prior
Speaker 1: to being fired. Other employees were put on performance improvement
Speaker 1: plans in a transparent attempt to lay the groundwork for
Speaker 1: future four cause firings. The slap dash bad faith nature
Speaker 1: of these reviews was open and obvious. Some managers acknowledged
Speaker 1: that they were instructed to stack rank their employees so
Speaker 1: that at least some of the employees in each group
Speaker 1: would be fired or placed on performance improvement plans, even
Speaker 1: if all were performing adequately. Other managers specifically informed employees
Speaker 1: that the managers had placed on pips that the employees
Speaker 1: could keep doing what they were doing because their performance
Speaker 1: did not require improvement. Other managers could not identify the
Speaker 1: standard by which they had assessed particular performance as requiring improvement,
Speaker 1: and at least some fired employees were informed that they
Speaker 1: had been fired by mistake and asked to return to work.
Speaker 1: All told on information and believe Twitter laid off, fired,
Speaker 1: or engineered the resignations of over five thousand employees within
Speaker 1: less than two months.
Speaker 5: That's beautiful stuff, real, real impressive leadership right there.
Speaker 2: I was going to just say, firing all of this
Speaker 2: stuff is very time consuming. All of the work that's
Speaker 2: being put into fucking over the employees and firing them
Speaker 2: and then whoopsies are the ones that arguably too much
Speaker 2: attention when there's vital things that need to be done
Speaker 2: at the company.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Sorry, Cody, what were you going to say?
Speaker 4: Oh, no, that's true.
Speaker 5: It's just there's He did that interview, an interview recently
Speaker 5: where they talked about this, and basically he's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're going to try to hire a bunch of people back,
Speaker 5: and maybe people we fired will want to come back,
Speaker 5: like very recently, Like this is the plan, and it's
Speaker 5: just souse. He didn't even like I saw some Twitter
Speaker 5: Blue subscribers be like, oh I love I love this because, like,
Speaker 5: you know, being able to own your mistakes.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, he didn't say it was a mistake. He
Speaker 4: said that he had to do it. This is all.
Speaker 5: This is all in the pretext that like I have
Speaker 5: to get rid of this many people. I have to
Speaker 5: And now that he did, he's like, well, we'll hire
Speaker 5: them back. That's still not admitting the mistake. He's still
Speaker 5: saying he had to do it. He's just saying he's
Speaker 5: going to do this new thing now.
Speaker 1: And it's very funny that he thinks these people are
Speaker 1: going to return to work, because I guarantee you they
Speaker 1: are never going back again.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Katie got Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Here, Oh man, it's just.
Speaker 4: Love it.
Speaker 1: Nom. That's something no one has ever said to Elon.
Speaker 4: Musk No, no, they know.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck. So let's go to the story of one
Speaker 1: of the people who's a party to this lawsuit, plaintiff Hawkins.
Speaker 1: Hawkins was Twitter's vice president of real Estate and Workplace,
Speaker 1: responsible for its office leases and managing its offices. So
Speaker 1: you can tell this person's not going to be long
Speaker 1: for the company because Elon's no longer dealing with any
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah. Uh, debt debt DA DA talks about
Speaker 1: her whole career, which I don't really care about, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so she's not opposed. It says that she was not
Speaker 1: opposed to the merger or the concept of Muscus, Twitter's
Speaker 1: new CEO. She received word of the impending merger deal
Speaker 1: while on family vacation, didn't know a lot about Musk
Speaker 1: at the time. I don't think that's possible, but okay,
Speaker 1: it just seems weird that you wouldn't know a lot
Speaker 1: about Elon Musk and live in the Bay and the
Speaker 1: tech industry.
Speaker 4: But yeah, maybe I guess it is like you cannot
Speaker 4: know about him, but you can. He's the Tesla guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the Tesla guy. That's probably what she means,
Speaker 1: given the uncertainty her focus in the period leading up
Speaker 1: to the merger. In the leadership she provided her team
Speaker 1: since round one, basic principle, let's focus on doing our
Speaker 1: jobs and protecting our people. During the pendency of the merger,
Speaker 1: employee attention was a critical concern, as we've talked about Yaha, YadA,
Speaker 1: yadda Musk okay at the closing of the As the
Speaker 1: closing of the merger approached, Musk's behavior heightened Hawkins' concerns.
Speaker 1: He showed up to an all hands meeting exactly once,
Speaker 1: arriving late and spending his time talking about extraterrestrials. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so funny, is.
Speaker 5: That the I bet that's the one where he also
Speaker 5: talked about gizmos and how he likes gizmos.
Speaker 1: That maybe I think that may come a little bit later,
Speaker 1: but it's very clear he was talking about aliens this
Speaker 1: whole time, and all of these twoops were just saying,
Speaker 1: I don't want to know.
Speaker 4: It's so right, it's so he's such a work.
Speaker 5: It's just like one of those that he thinks he's
Speaker 5: so interesting and like, oh everyone's so boring. I have
Speaker 5: great conversations, but he's only got these stock things he has,
Speaker 5: like a thing he says about aliens and other thing
Speaker 5: he says about simulations, and that's it, Like that's his
Speaker 5: idea of like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Very much like a push button get Bacon attitude to comedy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but like he thinks it's like this like deep,
Speaker 5: like interesting conversation that goes beyond his one like talking
Speaker 5: point about it.
Speaker 1: M M. But you know, yep, maybe stuff.
Speaker 4: Maybe he's not. Maybe he's fascinating, so.
Speaker 1: He shows up once he bullshits about aliens. Even after
Speaker 1: that meeting, Hawkins kept an open mind, hoping that Musk's
Speaker 1: odd behavior would not impact his leadership when she took
Speaker 1: over Twitter, and the employees were part of his team,
Speaker 1: but Hawkins also formed a strong determination to remain at
Speaker 1: Twitter at least throughout a new transition period in order
Speaker 1: to shepherd her team through the transition. The reality of
Speaker 1: Musk's new directives and operation of Twitter almost immediately shattered
Speaker 1: that determination. Upon Musk's arrival at Twitter, he brought with
Speaker 1: him a transition team of executives and sycophants from his
Speaker 1: other companies, from whom Musk directed Twitter's employees to take direction.
Speaker 1: This is the transition team. He also brought over Tesla
Speaker 1: engineers too. Upon information and belief make retention and termination
Speaker 1: to decisions. The transition team decreed that no managers were
Speaker 1: allowed to communicate with their teams via Slack, which just
Speaker 1: like just nukes the business, right, like, this is the
Speaker 1: only way we communicate for most things, and you're like,
Speaker 1: nobody gets to do this. They froze all payments to
Speaker 1: vendors until they could be verified. No explanations were ever
Speaker 1: given as to what this meant or why it was
Speaker 1: being done. Yeah, it basically Twitter was just breaching contracts
Speaker 1: and mass without like informing the vendors or the employees
Speaker 1: communicating with these vendors as to why face with tens
Speaker 1: or hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding invoices with
Speaker 1: no reasonable expectation of timely payment. Many of these vendors
Speaker 1: informed Twitter that they would not be performing further work
Speaker 1: for Twitter until those invoices were paid, which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, part of why DeSantis's announcement was a failure
Speaker 1: is that Twitter hadn't paid a major vendor that was
Speaker 1: responsible for like keeping Twitter spaces up and online space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very funny. But you know who does all their vendors
Speaker 1: because their vendors are me, they pay you over and
Speaker 1: do our ads. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's who I get paid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so help me get paid? H terrible?
Speaker 3: Did you get paid? Did you get paid? H?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We're back and I'm I'm counting up my money.
Speaker 1: I'm counting up my money, which is why everyone calls
Speaker 1: me the gold dust woman. I don't know that one
Speaker 1: was going to be hard to fit in that.
Speaker 3: That's good. That was really good, but I mean a.
Speaker 1: Little too much.
Speaker 3: It is your show.
Speaker 1: You did? You did both? Miss one that I did
Speaker 1: a little bit ago.
Speaker 3: What did you do?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 1: I was pretty pretty proud about this, but yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I've also forgotten which one I did. I missed one.
Speaker 1: Listeners you can go search for it. It was. It
Speaker 1: was like seven minutes ago. You know, nobody, nobody commented
Speaker 1: on it. Pull up the pull up the set list
Speaker 1: for rumors and figure out which one I did. That's
Speaker 1: a little more. You'll get a prize, You'll get a price.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you what it is. And
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk, I will probably not follow through with
Speaker 1: this promise. But you know, lie funny, Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm telling you sweet little lies man, good stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Twitter fired these vendors when they were, like, you know,
Speaker 1: had had issue with not getting paid. Musk attempted to
Speaker 1: halt the payment of his employees contractually mandated November rs
Speaker 1: US like these people were guaranteed by their contracts a
Speaker 1: certain like number of vested like internal stock units that
Speaker 1: he's just saying, attempting to not pay people. God, what
Speaker 1: a piece of shit. Robert Cayden was fired shortly after
Speaker 1: the November vest payments went through on information belief. Caden
Speaker 1: was fired because of his actions and making the November
Speaker 1: RSU payment and compliance with Twitter's obligations over Musk subjections.
Speaker 1: Delana Brand, Twitter's chief people officer and Hawkins's direct manager,
Speaker 1: handed in her notice within days after the merger closed,
Speaker 1: because she was disgusted at how people were being treated honor.
Speaker 1: About October thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Hawkins attended a meeting
Speaker 1: with Steve Davis, Jared Birchall, and many of Twitter's global leaders.
Speaker 1: In that meeting, Davis announced several changes that voted ill
Speaker 1: for Hawkins's team in her role at Twitter. First, he
Speaker 1: announced that Twitter's sourcing and procurement team should handle all
Speaker 1: lease negotiations from that point forward, despite lacking both personnel
Speaker 1: and experience sufficient to handle this task. Next, he announced
Speaker 1: that the company would no longer be working with brokers
Speaker 1: to procure negotiate leases. This choice ran in conflict with
Speaker 1: every established standard and practice of commercial real estate management.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is like a massive burden on the
Speaker 1: in house staff, which has just been like cut viciously.
Speaker 1: The only justification given for changes was Elon wants this
Speaker 1: very Soon thereafter, Davis informed Hawkins that Twitter needed to
Speaker 1: five find five hundred million dollars in annual savings. So
Speaker 1: to do this, just a half a billion, Yeah, Sophie,
Speaker 1: By the way, I'd like us to find half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in savings this year. For the company. Can
Speaker 1: we can we get the team on that, you know, sure? Maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: get the engineers on that. Sure, yeah, yeah, I'm willing
Speaker 1: to cut out coffee. Garrison's going to need to find
Speaker 1: like three or four hundred million dollars and uh yeah, together,
Speaker 1: I think that'll do it. My hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: coffee and another three or four hundred million dollars we
Speaker 1: can make it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I think that might be too much coffee anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you're probably right for my heart. No,
Speaker 1: I should just switch to cocaine again. That's that was
Speaker 1: just like twenty or thirty million a year.
Speaker 4: So I was gonna say tea maybe maybe switch to te.
Speaker 1: Wow, I don't know about that English.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't think Fleetwood Mac
Speaker 2: did too much tea, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, rumors wasn't made on Earl Gray, that was
Speaker 1: made on China white anyway. To accomplish this, each global
Speaker 1: lead was given a massive spreadsheet that had to be
Speaker 1: filled out every single day, identifying possible savings opportunities. Hawkins'
Speaker 1: spreadsheet covered thirty locations in upwards of fifty leashes. The
Speaker 1: pressure to fill in the spreadsheet on time was immense.
Speaker 1: Expectations from above made it clear that compliance was prioritized
Speaker 1: above accuracy. That's a good You know you're making a
Speaker 1: good team when people are like, you don't actually need
Speaker 1: to do your job as long as you're on time.
Speaker 3: That is wild.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. That's super funny.
Speaker 5: It's that that Marvel thing where like like five months
Speaker 5: ago they were like, we're gonna stop focusing on quantity
Speaker 5: and start focusing on quality.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, you gotta do it before.
Speaker 1: How would you describe what you were doing prior to this?
Speaker 4: Make sure it's good first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty good stuff.
Speaker 1: For example, Twitter instructed Hawkins to identify leases for cancelation.
Speaker 1: When she identified potential sites and leases that could be
Speaker 1: terminated for cost savings, Hawkins and her team took the
Speaker 1: time to document risk factors involved in downsizing or terminating
Speaker 1: these leases. One of the big things is that like
Speaker 1: if you break a lease, certainly you often have to
Speaker 1: pay a fee, Like if you do that with your apartment,
Speaker 1: you might have to pay like an extra month of rent.
Speaker 1: If you do that for like a giant corporate lease
Speaker 1: for thousands of workers. It could be significantly more.
Speaker 3: Money, one would imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it notes when the time came to present
Speaker 1: their conclusions, this added context was not well received. When
Speaker 1: informed of the risks of termination fees during a meeting
Speaker 1: on November third, twenty twenty two, Steve Davis said, well,
Speaker 1: we just won't pay those. We just won't pay landlords.
Speaker 1: Davis also tour to Hawkins, we just won't pay rent.
Speaker 1: Those are direct quotes from Davis per Hawkins's best recollection,
Speaker 1: to the extent that they are not word for word
Speaker 1: as they're extremely tight paraphrase. Ada Hawkins is shocked because
Speaker 1: part of her job, like is reputation based, Like I
Speaker 1: am the person managing leases for this company, and we
Speaker 1: will make meet our obligations.
Speaker 4: Yeah time we paid, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah paid.
Speaker 4: In general we pay again.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that in order for Elon
Speaker 1: to meet his cost saving goals, this woman has to
Speaker 1: like destroy her future in the business knowing that she
Speaker 1: will immediately get shit canned as soon as possible. It's
Speaker 1: just like such a gross guy and way of looking
Speaker 1: at people and looking at business like it's hard to
Speaker 1: he doesn't look Yeah, no, he is incapable of of
Speaker 1: like seeing or caring about human beings.
Speaker 4: Which tools or little pieces for him? Yeah, lack of
Speaker 4: a plan.
Speaker 3: I guess players only love you when they're playing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what everyone says about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: So I see it.
Speaker 1: It's okay, a lot of these are going to be
Speaker 1: half assed guys, but you know, like we're just not
Speaker 1: going to make it all them all work very well.
Speaker 1: Unwilling to be involved in, let alone responsible for such thefts,
Speaker 1: Hawkins resigned the next day. He is asking her to steal.
Speaker 1: She did so despite her internal commitment to remain through
Speaker 1: the transition to protect her team, because she had no
Speaker 1: other choice. Yeah, I get that. That that kind of
Speaker 1: scans like he is saying, I need you to commit
Speaker 1: a series of crimes for me. Elon Musk a man
Speaker 1: incapable of loyalty.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but that's the other thing, Like there's no
Speaker 5: like there's just even if you're like on his good
Speaker 5: side at one point.
Speaker 1: It's worth nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's worth nothing, and you're worth nothing to him.
Speaker 4: And as soon as you even.
Speaker 5: Like not even like uh barely a challenge will turn
Speaker 5: him around.
Speaker 2: And then you're going who becomes the scapegoat for things. Actually,
Speaker 2: in this situation which it hit the fan, you know,
Speaker 2: they're more likely to get wrapped up in that. Elon
Speaker 2: Musk isn't clearly he invaded all of it. We've all
Speaker 2: seen succession, I think, right, we've seen it.
Speaker 3: Maybe Robert hasn't.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, it happens. Yeah, I don't know what, Like,
Speaker 1: I get why she did what she did. So Killian
Speaker 1: is the next person we talked about. Joseph Killian. He
Speaker 1: was Twitter's global head of construction and Design. He was
Speaker 1: immediately given Hawkins's duties after she quits. He worked directly
Speaker 1: with the transition team and was directed by Steve Davis
Speaker 1: and Liz Jenkins, who worked for the Boring Company, and
Speaker 1: Pablo Mendoza, a venture capitalist who invested with Musk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's that's cool. Oh god, oh god. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a big scam, but they still are
Speaker 1: a company. They dug that stupid hole in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: I went through. That was like, you dumb as fuck.
Speaker 4: They're not a company anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean they have engaged in what are effectively a
Speaker 1: series of like roping in local governments to agree to
Speaker 1: work with him, and then actually.
Speaker 5: Like ye and pulling it out and then like canceling
Speaker 5: other uh yeah, more viable transportation plans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to fuck with like public transportation. So I
Speaker 1: just noted like this guy Killian gets given Hawkins his
Speaker 1: job and he's being managed by Steve Davis and Liz
Speaker 1: Jenkins who work for the boring company, and then there's
Speaker 1: this bit which is amazing. Killian was also directed in
Speaker 1: these activities by Nicole Hollander. On information and Belief, Hollander
Speaker 1: was not employed by any of Musk's companies. On information
Speaker 1: and belief, Hollander is Steve Davis's girlfriend than the mother
Speaker 1: of his child. So Musk's Musks like Transition team are
Speaker 1: just like hiring their girlfriends to manage the people in
Speaker 1: committing real estate fraud.
Speaker 5: It's amazing where it's like, yeah, if you like, say,
Speaker 5: my god.
Speaker 1: On information believe, Hollander was living at Twitter headquarters with
Speaker 1: Davis and their infant child, who was a older what
Speaker 1: the fuck?
Speaker 4: Yeah, family values awesome.
Speaker 1: Despite not being employed by any of Musk's companies, Hollander
Speaker 1: nonetheless had full instructional authority over Killian and the rest
Speaker 1: of his team with regards to the Transition Almost immediately,
Speaker 1: Musk's zero cost basis policy reared its head. Killian was
Speaker 1: informed by the transition team that he would have to
Speaker 1: justify his spin to Musk personally, and that if Musk
Speaker 1: was not convinced that the expenses were necessary, he would
Speaker 1: simply default on his contractual obligations and let the expenses
Speaker 1: go unpaid. In early November, Davis sent a three am
Speaker 1: email to fifteen or twenty managers complaining about Twitter's rent obligations,
Speaker 1: which totaled one hundred and thirty million annually. And this email,
Speaker 1: Davis specifically compared Twitter's rent obligations to Spacexes, noting that
Speaker 1: Twitter had one tenth as many employees as SpaceX but
Speaker 1: paid five times as much rent annually. Of course, Twitter
Speaker 1: had significantly more employees when it first incurred its rent obligations.
Speaker 1: Killian quickly became concerned that Musk intended to stop paying
Speaker 1: rent on Twitter's outstanding leases, breaching the com tracks and
Speaker 1: placing the company at risk of being evicted. Indeed, Musk's attorney,
Speaker 1: Alex Spiro gladly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter
Speaker 1: landlord Twitter's landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent since
Speaker 1: San Francisco was a shithole. Oh my god, is.
Speaker 3: That the only thing you need to not pay rent?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: This this city with a fraction of the violent crime,
Speaker 1: for example, many parts of Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I was just gonna say, because if that's
Speaker 2: the case, I think we could apply it to a
Speaker 2: lot of places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I yeah, I'm so. I'm so frustrated by this
Speaker 1: man and all of the people around him. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: incredibly hateable, old man or a piece of shit whatever.
Speaker 1: Musk even went so far as to prevent Twitter from
Speaker 1: paying the janitorial staff for the work they had already
Speaker 1: provided after the janitors complained about being fired. In essence,
Speaker 1: it quickly became clear to Killian that Musk's intended method
Speaker 1: of operation was to obtain services from vendors without any
Speaker 1: intention of keeping the agreements or paying for services requested
Speaker 1: and received. In other words, robbing people like stealing from them, theft,
Speaker 1: the thing that he's complained about happening on the streets
Speaker 1: of San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's okay if you wear a suit and
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great if you wear a suit and do it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely again, it's what kind of Yeah, I'm agreeing with you.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, the I really like it.
Speaker 4: I know I'm not wrong.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like, if we're going to
Speaker 1: have these really fucked up standard ground laws, you know,
Speaker 1: where people can basically like commit murder if they feel
Speaker 1: like their car is going to get stolen or something,
Speaker 1: I feel like you should have the right to do that.
Speaker 1: If you're like a janitor working for Elon Musk, like
Speaker 1: you should you should be allowed to draw on him. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that this is a self defense situation law. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I whatever, I don't know, this is this is
Speaker 1: so disheartening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really it's like really really disgusting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and just uh, I guess I've seen some of
Speaker 5: the uh fail get lifted and sort of like people's
Speaker 5: like rose colored glasses on about him be taken off
Speaker 5: a bit. But it's just obvious the kind of person
Speaker 5: he is, and like how he doesn't really care about
Speaker 5: a lot of the stuff he says.
Speaker 4: He cares about. It's just I don't know, it sucks.
Speaker 1: Hate it, Yeah, it sucks. He just cares about being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's, he's he sees himself primarily as an entertainer
Speaker 1: because for some reason, like all of the worst people
Speaker 1: in America, his primary goal is to like be famous
Speaker 1: for making people like laugh or whatever. Like it's weird
Speaker 1: because like, stand up comedians are the most miserable people
Speaker 1: in the world, and also all of the worst richest
Speaker 1: people desperately wish they were a stand up comedian. Like
Speaker 1: you saw it when fucking what's his name? Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle brought him out that like, oh, if you
Speaker 1: could only yeah, if you could only have an audience
Speaker 1: eating out of the palm of your hand, you would
Speaker 1: be happier than you've ever been in your life.
Speaker 3: But like, it's the one thing you can't buy.
Speaker 2: And we've talked about that on various shows that we've
Speaker 2: been on or have.
Speaker 3: But you know, obviously this was not a cool kid.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 2: He's not a well liked person. The only cachet that
Speaker 2: he's ever had is his money. He's not even a
Speaker 2: smart innovative person. Every idea he's had is someone else's idea.
Speaker 3: That he's tanking. I mean, are any of his businesses
Speaker 3: doing well?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you've seen a lot also with like the Ai
Speaker 5: quote unquote boom, where it's so clear some of this
Speaker 5: is just like, oh, you just wish you were a
Speaker 5: little more creative.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, why they hate writers.
Speaker 5: You hate exactly, you hate musicians, you hate creators because
Speaker 5: you don't you can't do it well or you're not
Speaker 5: praised enough for it or whatever, and so you have
Speaker 5: to have the machine do it.
Speaker 1: I think what we actually need to solve most of
Speaker 1: our problems a basic income that ensures that like people
Speaker 1: could just like paint or make music or do comedy,
Speaker 1: uh and survive. And and here's the key part. Then
Speaker 1: we use AI to give the people who are worst
Speaker 1: at at a fan base so they feel like they're
Speaker 1: successful and they don't become yeah yeah, yeah fans. Yeah
Speaker 1: they'll they'll never meet them, they do the yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: and then we can we don't have a.
Speaker 5: Daily Lives doesn't exist account where they make like oh,
Speaker 5: this is a fake person is made with a bunch
Speaker 5: of people an audience of them following and clapping and
Speaker 5: clicking the like button praising is bad pilot.
Speaker 3: Now now I'm envisioning, like I know they're saying that.
Speaker 1: What Now I'm envisioning like a Black Mirror episode where
Speaker 1: some journalist is like confused at how there's so many
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro fans of his TV writing, or like how
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is such a successful stand up comedian and
Speaker 1: he like he cracks the case and then like the
Speaker 1: FBI has to come destroy him because you have like
Speaker 1: you don't know what we're keeping it like we have
Speaker 1: to let them think they're good.
Speaker 2: Good, But I mean this scenario, look, was it a
Speaker 2: couple of days ago?
Speaker 3: The godfather of AI comes out saying this could be.
Speaker 2: Our lead the world and our annilation. No, I'm like,
Speaker 2: maybe this is our great positive reframe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know what's even better than AI providing
Speaker 1: a fan base for all of the your too right
Speaker 1: wing culture warriors who got into advocating genocide because nobody
Speaker 1: laughed at their jokes.
Speaker 4: I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well it's you. Oh, it's both of you.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Which is our time to plug stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I thought it was a time to do one one
Speaker 4: less Fleetwood mac reference.
Speaker 1: Oh I mean we.
Speaker 4: Could we still can? I did?
Speaker 2: This has been a total has been one of my dreams.
Speaker 3: Now, that was bad.
Speaker 1: That was that was that was good. That was good.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of.
Speaker 3: Being here to stay with you guys.
Speaker 2: Oh, we have a show called some More News that
Speaker 2: Cody hosts on the YouTube channel and a podcast that
Speaker 2: Cody's going to tell you about now.
Speaker 5: It's called some More News. Yeah, you can watch it
Speaker 5: on YouTube dot com. Slash the name of the show,
Speaker 5: probably and even more News is the name of the
Speaker 5: podcast version, which is more of a different kind of show.
Speaker 5: But it's the same people where podcasts are available.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so check them both out.
Speaker 4: Check it out.
Speaker 5: Google the names of our names and you'll find all
Speaker 5: the stuff that we do.
Speaker 1: Google Google Katie Stole, Google Google Cody Johnston, or google
Speaker 1: them by their nicknames see Money and k Money, which
Speaker 1: is exclusively how I refer to them in private.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 4: Time.
Speaker 5: I don't really respond because I always forget, but yeah,
Speaker 5: that's how I type it out when I'm saying I
Speaker 5: just call you both, come money.
Speaker 1: But they seem to know, Oh, I definitely that works,
Speaker 1: Come Money, Come honey.
Speaker 2: I just have one last thing to say to you both,
Speaker 2: and it's that you make love and fun.
Speaker 1: Ah, there we go, There we go. Yeah, come back
Speaker 1: for the next part of this series, when we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about another album. I don't know which other album.
Speaker 1: I don't know. How do you guys feel about the
Speaker 1: dire straits? I only know one song that they wrote.
Speaker 3: I only know a couple songs limited.
Speaker 4: I only know money for nothing, limited references available.
Speaker 1: Well, well we'll work again. We just do rumors again.
Speaker 6: There was the album and you know what's not an
Speaker 6: album but doesn't have ads? Our cooler Zone Media Apple
Speaker 6: premium subscription channel you can subscribe to.
Speaker 1: Now Robert say something. Yeah, I am not secondhand news,
Speaker 1: but you know what's first hand news is if you
Speaker 1: get a subscription to cooler Zone Media on Apple's whatever
Speaker 1: their thing, then you don't get ads, and then the
Speaker 1: news isn't secondhand. It's just coming straight to you unfiltered.
Speaker 1: You know. H. Every time I accidentally say something offensive,
Speaker 1: we leave it in for you guys. That's right. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of piss. Yeah, that's that's my.
Speaker 3: New piss out of a podcast.
Speaker 1: U when we say it the way we do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really not bones Yeah, uh definitely not. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's been an episode.
Speaker 6: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 6: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.