it cops to tesla and spacex. when elon comes in, he s going to have sophisticated data analysts. it s just going to happen like that, right? unless it s not. so, why are so many people getting this so wrong? i just want to level with you. part of what we re seeing on the right is a kind of partisan hero worship applied to a business league. itself it s kind of odd, but we know how partisanship can work. partisan fans get biassed towards their party or team, and that can put you in kind of a box. those kind of blinders now being applied to shield musk, a very rich, powerful man, from objective judgment from some of those quarters, even as independent experts see his leadership besieged by missteps. and there s measurable failure. traffic is tanking. top voices who power a site like this are using less. other user say they re taking a break from twitter altogether.
person spending over $40 billion on something. you can bet his interest goes well beyond tweets or a personal hobby or even going viral. twitter matters more for its impact on the world than any particular tech it has or even its revenue. and so that s where we begin tonight. you think about those old rules that try to limit how many newspapers one company can own or how much media one company can own in a town, and it reminds us, a sense of sheer power of one person owning this platform that shapes media, perception, even potentially elections in many different countries around the world. there were signs that musk was doing this, taking this giant bet, spending all of this money and time and energy, on twitter. and he was doing it for his own self-interest and power. and as we ve documented before, tame he s a shrewd marketer. so he didn t say, hey, i m doing this for me. he pitched his takeover to american audiences as a kind of
for once, this isn t about power and money. musk is doing it to save free speech. it s not an overstatement to say it could be the single most development for free speech in the modern history of the united states. this is a guy who s made a lot of money, been very successful. loves the country and the freedom it affords. the first thing he s going to do is establish free speech there. okay, there was a lot of talk like that, as you saw from musk and his fans. we re just going to look at the record. anyone is free to love america and free speech, and while musk rushed to pick sides in american politics he attacked clinton, buddied up to ron desantis, invited trump back on twitter, fast tracked a collaboration with tucker carlson. that s all fine. do what you want. when you widen out beyond musk s chosen political spats what he wants you to be focused on and distracted by, and look at the full record of twitter around the world, under elon musk, the company caves to
that s may be why so many republicans thought a musk twitter would not only go viral or dunk on their enemies or post trolling content, but it might help them win elections, in an environment where you may have noticed republicans have struggled to win national elections. they gave mr. musk a lot of latitude over these last eight months, and what s he done with it? i showed you tonight, he squandered it, a lot on a path that hurt his credibility, his politics and yes, his own finances. so, it doesn t matter whether you tweet or get on threads or any of that. just as kennedy needed television, modern politics needs these platforms, until they re completely replaced, and that raises a big question. is this a total debacle for musk or is it reversible? where are we headed? if it is a debacle, is a failed twitter at this point better for
complex and debatable issues. meaning i m not going to try to resolve them with you all at this moment. but i will tell you this the markets don t like what musk is doing. they don t like the perception twitter s more lenient to hate speech or problems. about a 50% plunge in ad revenue, which musk concedes, and the company, like any company, can debate volatile and noisy valuations, but musk says twitter lost over half its value since he bought it. so, the business guru is not exactly delivering business results, which were much promised, and that undercut some of the early right wing buzz. he s our edison. this is our thomas edison. this is our da vinci. he s draining the swamp of twitter. the way he s doing it to me is genius. you know he s a genius when