when he made the offer and they accepted it? i watch the reaction of left wing liberals and they freaked out. they dedicated their shows to how this was a takeover and going to mess up free speech and all of that stuff. he laughed. he got the reaction he wanted. to susan s point, the stock was the buy was too much. 54.20. everybody knows why he did that. he s probably going to say hey, i m going to offer for 42. he got the reaction he wanted. it s a pot reference. there s no second bidder, mind you. neil: that s right. on that point, and it s a very good one on scott s point, this issue with the technology sector in general. it had an extremely rough week. a lot of the stocks have been
as one analyst told me this morning, that would be like saying the dog ate your homework. this is not a ton of support in the market for this sort of reasoning. impossible to know musk s motivation. not a ton of support. it has people wondering is this really just a ploy to renegotiate the price of twitter? his offer was 54.20. it s trading closer to $40 this year. was this a play to renegotiate or to completely just walk away from the deal, but it has been an interesting morning to say the least. one lawyer i got off the phone with saying he s been doing this for 40 years and what does on hold mean? it s been a head scratcher not just for folks like you and me, people watching this play out, but people who do this day in and day out. he s playing by elon s rules. and we ve seen a selloff since the initial offer in the markets. but he would be penalized if he walked away? right. the price tag is 1 billion.
elon musk has put his bid to buy twitter on hold. he has been vocal about his goal to clean up twitter s spam bot problem and wants to pinpoint the exact number of fake accounts on the site. he added he is still committed to the buyout. joining me is the new york times contributor and pivot co-host, kara swisher and one of the smartest people i know. you kind of called this, didn t you? i did indeed. the price was going down. the price of twitter, he offered 54.20 and it s been hovering $10 below it for a while. twitter would have fallen off a
it is certainly not a done deal. i don t own twitter yet. so this is not like a thing that will definitely happen. what if i don t own twitter. musk following up with a tweet today that he is still quote committed acquisition. twitter under the assumption that the takeover is happening. just yesterday firing key executives and freezing hiring but investors are abandoning the stock down nearly 10% as the price drops significantly below musk 54.20 cents offer leaving many wondering if he will try renegotiate. musk making news this week by calling donald trump s twitter ban a mistake and saying he would reinstate the former president if the deal does, in fact, go through. now, if musk is, in fact, looking for a reason to believe to walk, it will be difficult for him to get off of the deal without getting sued by twitter as he reportedly declined due diligence to close the deal faster unless he can prove the company misrepresented the numbers. back to you, mike. mike: kelly o grady liv
you lead me to my next question which is isn t the kind of thing that could materially change the value of twitter being one of its biggest users and the guy who wants to buy it suggesting online it s got big problems and he may not want to buy it? is anyone discussing the prospect of musk potentially interfering in his own deal in some way? well, it may be that he is attempting to, in fact, establish that there is some sort of material change to the value of twitter, something that perhaps twitter did not disclose beforehand when he looked at acquisitions but if you look at the background context of all of this, right, i mean, twitter s stock value is down a huge amount below the $54.20 a share that he originally offered. meanwhile, you know, musk s value of his tesla stock, which is the collateral he s using for borrowing all this money that he is supposedly going to use to buy twitter, that stock is down. so this does feel like some sort of effort to renegotiate the value of it.