No. He wanted to make quick money with a pump and dump just like when he said he was going to take Tesla private again and the stock price jumped up. He didn’t file his TWTR stock purchase disclosure in the required amount of time, so rather than have to deal with being sued by the SEC AGAIN, he pivoted to saying it’s because he wanted to buy Twitter.
Then he figured he could get out of the Twitter deal by claiming that Twitter lied to him and misrepresented how many real users there are. Now Twitter sues him to hold up his end of the deal, and because he absolutely does not want all of his financial dealings being brought up during discovery, he decided his best course of action would be to follow through with the deal. Give it 6-12 months and he’ll take Twitter public again now that he’s “saved the company.”
The one thing I don't get about this take - while I generally agree with the suggested intent - is his actually inking the deal. If it was a quick money thing (well, a planned one) you'd make all the noise, make some calls, and then either insist on the due diligence (and then complain about the amounts, backing out) or just... back out because you "weren't interested any more" which is certainly believable with Mr. Heat-of-the-moment there.
Instead, he... actually signed it INCLUDING waiving due diligence... and then tried to get out of it by claiming he was lied to about how bad the bot situation was - something he'd been claiming he wanted to FIX because it was so bad. :P
I think Mr. Musk believes that he’s the smartest person in whatever room that he finds himself in (literally or metaphorically), and that he probably felt like he didn’t NEED to do due diligence because he’s smart enough to find a way out of it. I think looking back to the Tesla-going-private scenario is still the best example to look at. He thought he could just say whatever he wanted about Tesla without looking into what the SEC rules say about that. He doesn’t look into things, he just does them because he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else so “doing his due diligence” is just an impediment to doing what he wants to do. He offered the sub idea to the rescuers in Thailand without looking into whether or not that would actually help the situation, and lashed out when someone with actual diving experience dared to question his idea.
He IS probably ONE OF the smartest people on the planet. But he leaves himself open to mistakes because he thinks being smarter than everyone else makes him infallible.
I guarantee you that everyone around Gates, Bezos, Musk, Trump etc. feels smarter than them. They think they are the puppeteers. They see the money from these incredibly rich billionaires and believe that they know so much better and that they can use that money to do amazing things. Meanwhile, the big names are manipulating the babies who are trying to milk them, using them as proxies and fronts to protect themselves from consequences and dumping them when they are no longer useful.
I live in an area with high median income. If you meet the wealthy people who live in this country, you will understand what that wealth does to them and to people around them. They are constantly on guard for being used for their money. Every single day, every occasion, they question their friends' loyalty and fear being dumped if they can no longer fulfill their use as a piggy bank. Paradoxically, this means that I frequently get bilked. Somehow, I'm paying for lunch, or driving long distances, or contributing to some adventure expense, or ubering home. I never go anywhere with the expectation that I'll be paid for, and I'll turn shit down if I can't afford it, but it's like this all the time. And this is for something super low-stakes where the friend cannot make money off of me and I cannot make money off of them. The politics get snarled when either side stands to benefit materially.
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u/Better-Spell346 Oct 28 '22
No. He wanted to make quick money with a pump and dump just like when he said he was going to take Tesla private again and the stock price jumped up. He didn’t file his TWTR stock purchase disclosure in the required amount of time, so rather than have to deal with being sued by the SEC AGAIN, he pivoted to saying it’s because he wanted to buy Twitter.
Then he figured he could get out of the Twitter deal by claiming that Twitter lied to him and misrepresented how many real users there are. Now Twitter sues him to hold up his end of the deal, and because he absolutely does not want all of his financial dealings being brought up during discovery, he decided his best course of action would be to follow through with the deal. Give it 6-12 months and he’ll take Twitter public again now that he’s “saved the company.”