This is the result that everyone guessed, waiting for musk to say it himself. Now he finally admits that buying twitter will welcome trump back. Musk said in an interview with the financial times today that he thought it was a "clear and stupid mistake" for Twitter to block former US President trump. "I think it is wrong to block trump. This is a morally wrong decision, which alienates a large part of the United States and will not make trump unable to speak in the end."
In 2017, then president trump met musk at the White House dinner
Musk had not made a clear statement on the matter before. Today is the first time he has officially stated his position, "I will lift the ban on trump. Obviously, I don't have twitter yet, so it doesn't necessarily happen." But musk also revealed that in the best case, he would complete the acquisition in two to three months. This statement undoubtedly confirms the expectation of the outside world: after musk buys twitter, he will definitely let trump return. Although he spent $44 billion on twitter, not all for trump, musk will almost certainly lift the ban on the former president after he takes over twitter.
Permanently block trump
Briefly review the process of twitter blocking trump. After the 2020 U.S. election, trump refused to recognize the election results, accused of election fraud, and incited his supporters through social media, which directly led to the riots on Capitol Hill on January 6 last year. After the riots, twitter became the first social media to block trump on the grounds of "inciting violence to endanger public safety". Trump, with more than 80 million fans, disappeared on twitter, followed by many social platforms such as youtube and Facebook.
Long before the ban, then president trump had clashed with Twitter many times. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco, and the political positions of management and employees are inclined to the left. During the 2018 U.S. mid-term election, 96% of twitter employees' political donations supported the Democratic Party. It is the technology company with the most left political donation tendency in Silicon Valley, second only to 97% of Netflix.
Over the past two years, Twitter has dealt with many disputes and untrue remarks about Trump's COVID-19, ethnic riots and election fraud allegations by tagging, providing background information and folding. Trump therefore issued an executive order threatening retaliation against social media such as twitter. But this needs to change the law. The presidential decree cannot directly punish companies such as twitter.
After the ban, trump did not give up. In early July, Trump's amendment to the constitution was rejected by the US regional court, which denied Trump's permanent right to freedom of speech. However, Trump's amendment was suspended in San Francisco. The federal district judge said in his 17 page judgment that the first amendment applies only to government restricted speech, not to private enterprises.
In the past few years, American conservatives have filed several similar lawsuits against social media such as twitter, but they have been rejected for the same reason. Moreover, according to Article 230 of the Federal Communications Law, Internet companies control the content on their own platforms, and the government has no right to interfere with this right (Note: child pornography and sexual trafficking are not guaranteed, and Internet companies need to bear responsibility).
Trump's lawyers still have the right to appeal this decision, but now it seems that he doesn't need to continue to appeal. Musk will meet his requirements when he becomes the owner of twitter. Although trump had previously publicly expressed his appreciation for musk, he would stay on his platform, truth.
But not many people took him seriously. The influence of truth and Twitter is very different. If trump plans to continue to run in 2024, he will certainly return to the most influential twitter platform to solicit votes and raise money for himself. If trump returns to twitter, it will undoubtedly have a huge impact on this year's US mid-term election and the 2024 presidential election.
Twitter is not only a social media, but also a battlefield of public opinion between the two political factions in the United States. After musk announced the acquisition of twitter, many members of Congress and conservative opinion leaders of the Republican Party expressed strong concern about the deal. Loyal trump supporters such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Georgia congressman majorie Taylor Greene and fox host Tucker Carlson expressed strong expectations for Musk's acquisition of twitter.
According to the previously reached acquisition agreement, Musk's $44 billion acquisition of twitter will be completed within this year. At that time, twitter will be delisted from Nasdaq and become Musk's private holding company. According to media reports, musk once said in the financing process that he planned to re launch twitter in a few years.
Finish hunting in three months
It took musk only three months to force the twitter board to disarm from quietly lurking to quickly attacking to completing the hunt. From the end of January this year to the submission of information disclosure documents in early April, musk quietly purchased 73.65 million ordinary shares of twitter in the open market in more than two months, and the shareholding ratio quickly reached 9.2%. When he suddenly surfaced as Twitter's largest shareholder, the twitter board was caught off guard.
Twitter's board of directors invited musk as a director the next day in exchange for his commitment not to increase his stake and not to seek control. When musk refused to join the board of directors, his intention to buy twitter was clear. The world's richest man wants to turn the most influential social media into his personal assets and transform it according to his own intentions.
Although the twitter board quickly launched the poison pill plan, musk did not raise the offer to impress the board, but adopted a strategy of buying people's hearts. He knows that Twitter has no super voting rights, and the shareholding ratio of the board of directors is even less than 2.5% (of which 2.25% comes from his friend Dorsey). As long as enough institutional investors agree, he can force the board of directors to accept the offer. After all, the responsibility of the board of directors is to maximize the interests of shareholders.
Twitter shareholders are obviously very dissatisfied with the company's management and board of directors. As the most influential social media in the world, Twitter has not brought relatively equal business value to shareholders. Over the past few years, the growth of Twitter users has stalled, suffered huge losses, and the stock price performance is lower than that of other social media platforms. When musk made the offer, Twitter's market value was less than $40 billion, or even two-thirds of snap, the main youth market.
Musk is taking advantage of this dissatisfaction of investors. After he offered a $45 billion financing guarantee, musk met with several large institutional investors and won their approval with his cash offer. Under the pressure of investors, the twitter board of directors completely changed its attitude within ten days, took the initiative to meet musk for negotiation, and finally accepted the cash offer of $54.2 per share. Buy it now price does not give the other party room to bargain, which is Buffett's common acquisition strategy.
Why on earth did musk do this? He has repeatedly said that he bought twitter not to make money, but to protect the social cornerstone of democracy - freedom of speech, because Twitter is a citizen's Square in the Internet era. Musk claimed that he realized that Twitter could not prosper or serve this cornerstone under the current mechanism, so he had to buy twitter for privatization.
According to US media reports, Musk's circle of close friends has played a crucial role in his acquisition of twitter. These people include his former partner Peter Thiel, his brother kimbal musk (director of Tesla), Steve juvertson (also an early investor of Tesla and SpaceX), co-founder of well-known venture capital Dfj in Silicon Valley, and so on. They support and encourage musk to buy twitter dominated by the radical left and transform "real freedom of speech".
These people have similar political positions and world outlook to musk, also known as libertarians, who oppose restrictions on civil liberties, excessive government intervention in enterprises, content censorship by social media, and the economic policies of high tax income and high welfare of the left.
In the current spectrum of American politics, libertarians are closer to the Republican Party and incompatible with the Democratic Party. Musk himself made a satirical cartoon, which means that as the American political spectrum continues to lean to the left, neutralists like himself appear more and more conservative and close to the right. In the past few years, he has repeatedly clashed with the Democratic Party and liberals on many topics, such as the COVID-19, vaccination, labor relations, rich people's taxes, etc.
Clean twitter management
Musk's personal attitude towards twitter can be seen from a small episode. On March 20 this year, Seth Dillon, CEO of the US right-wing satirical media Babylon bee, was briefly banned by twitter for publicly ridiculing Rachel Levine as the US Deputy Secretary of health; This mockery tweet was also deleted because of "hate speech". According to Dijon, he then received a call from musk, who not only asked him about the specific situation, but also revealed that he was considering acquiring twitter. At that time, musk had not publicly disclosed his shareholding in twitter.
After musk announced his acquisition of twitter, he once again publicly criticized twitter for suppressing freedom of speech. During the 2020 U.S. election, twitter restricted the dissemination of a scandal about the son of Democratic presidential candidate Biden at the suggestion of its chief legal adviser, vijava gadde. Gard also played an important role in blocking Trump's account. Musk's public accusation made gard the focus of public opinion. It is reported that gard's account was soon besieged by musk supporters and conservative Internet users. She even lost control and cried because of too much pressure at twitter internal meetings.
The question now is whether the democratic government will take measures to intervene in the deal to prevent musk from acquiring twitter. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced its concern about the deal, but will formally decide whether to investigate next month. However, at present, the FTC has only four members, with two seats for the Democratic Party and two seats for the Republican Party, forming a stalemate.
The most critical fifth member, Alvaro Bedoya, the fifth member nominated by Biden and a professor at Georgetown University, was firmly resisted by Republicans. Since his nomination in September last year, the Senate confirmation process of the radical left professor has been postponed for eight months, and he has been unable to officially take office at the FTC.
After musk joined twitter, twitter management will almost certainly be purged, and the current CEO Parag Agrawal and gard will almost certainly leave. It is rumored that musk may serve as an interim CEO for a period of time and may choose his close friend Ken howery, one of the co founders of PayPal, to manage twitter.
With Thiel, Holly founded confiniity and took up the position of CFO. After PayPal was sold to eBay, Holly founded founders fund with Thiel and entered the field of venture capital. Like Thiel, he has a close relationship with the trump administration and served as the US ambassador to Sweden.
Perhaps Musk's acquisition of twitter also means that the era of "liberal dominance" of Twitter is completely over. With the high-level leaving together, there may be many middle-level and technical employees with left political positions.
Sina Technology Zheng Jun from Silicon Valley